The winner of the Idaho State Smoke-N-Wings BBQ Competition was Janice Smella from the Canadian team SmellaQue. If that is confusing, it is because the Smoke-N-Wings BBQ competition is an open competition, sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society, which is the only one being held in Idaho. That is how Smella, a native of Calgary, is also the Idaho State Champion.

Smella’s two-person team – she and her husband – are also the 2024 Overall Canadian BBQ team, a distinction they have won four times now. They are now eligible for the Jack Daniels World Championship and the American Royal Competitions, where they are already known for their expertise. They have been competing for 11 years across North America.

Considering herself a “hobbyist” barbeque cook, Smella is fascinated with food – the ingredients, the chemistry, reactions, origins and creating new adventures in her kitchen. Smella hosts a blog, https://smellaque.com/blog/, where she shares, “a competitive bbq cook’s food curiosity,” - and some of her recipes.

Smella also characterized barbeque events as the friendliest kind of competition around. This weekend you could see that as the airport hanger erupted with applause, high fives, and congratulations for each team’s recognition.

The Kids Q competition was also friendly and supportive as 19 young chefs from ages 5–16 brought their best burgers to the judges. The younger chefs had parental coaches teaching the fine nuances of cooking over hot coals as they cooked the perfect hamburger.

In both adult and kids’ competitions, each score was based on appearance, taste, and tenderness. Taste was given the greatest weight, followed by tenderness and then appearance.

The older Kids Q division had a very tight race with its top-placed winners separated by only thousandths in their scores – that’s the third place after the decimal. That division was won by Sailor Tomazin and the younger Kids Q division was won by Chef Lydia Bromhall.

There were other kinds of winners as well. Wyoming’s American Heroes barbeque team, Brad and Devonie Mueller, scored a perfect score of 180 for the first time in the pork category – thus completing their cumulative record of perfect scores in all the categories: brisket, pork, ribs and chicken. If you want to know just how good that pork is, they are located in Casper, Wyoming, a mere 7 hours away.

A huge thanks goes to organizers Steven and Stacey McClellan for their hours of donated time to create a friendly and family-supportive competition that brought barbeque from all over the county – and Canada.

With their team of volunteers, they were also able to support the Grilling for Grads silent auction that raised about $9,000 for Bingham County seniors’ scholarships for higher education through the Bingham County Mayors Scholarship Fund.