2 Wisconsin pitmasters battle it out in ‘BBQ Brawl’

Two Wisconsin chefs are competing on the fifth season of Food Network’s “BBQ Brawl,” which premiered earlier this month.

The show brings in pitmasters from around the country to compete in teams led by celebrity chefs.

Each week, teams are given grilling-themed challenges like “surf and turf” or “roadside barbecue.” The team whose dish scores lowest with the judges has to send a team member home.

Chef Elena Terry told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that competing on the show was “pretty surreal.”

“I was so excited to meet (the celebrity chefs) and to be in that space,” Terry said. “I took a second during the (first) challenge and just was like, ‘Wow, you’re here doing this. You better step up and get to it.’”

Terry is the founder and executive chef of Wild Bearies, a nonprofit organization that promotes Native American food sovereignty and offers educational programming around traditional foodways.

In 2022, Terry was named one of Wisconsin’s most influential Native American leaders. While she is perhaps best known for her work in Indigenous seed keeping, she said her roots are in live-fire cooking.

“It was around an open fire with my grandmothers and my family doing traditional things — that’s where my love for cooking began,” she said.

For Terry, showing her grilling skills on national television is an opportunity to represent the contributions of Indigenous chefs to the world of barbecue. 

“If I can show the next generation of Indigenous chefs that this is a space that not only can they exist in but they can thrive in, that’s a win for me,” she said during the first episode of “BBQ Brawl.”

Terry is joined on this season of “BBQ Brawl” by fellow Wisconsin chef Ashley Turner. Turner moved to Wisconsin in 2019 from her home state of Texas.

“I get the opportunity and the gift of being an ambassador for two places that really have their own point of view, Wisconsin and West Texas,” Turner told “Wisconsin Today.”

For the first challenge on the show, the chefs were asked to present their take on a slider. Turner decided to bring the Wisconsin flair by making a beer-brat slider topped with cheese curds. She added some Texas influence and heat with a jalapeno relish.

“I tried to find a middle ground between (the) two flavor profiles and worlds of food colliding,” Turner said.

Before appearing on “BBQ Brawl,” Turner spent many years working in locally owned restaurants and building small businesses in Texas and Wisconsin. After filming the show, she stepped into a new role as executive chef of the Milwaukee County Zoo.

“I went from brawlin’ to zoo life,” Turner said. “It’s a different animal — literally a different animal — here at the zoo.”

Turner will have an opportunity to pull out her smoker for the A La Carte at the Zoo event in August, which will feature barbecue and live music.

Despite competing in different teams on the show, Terry and Turner are friends and are cheering each other on through the competition and beyond. 

For both chefs, appearing on “BBQ Brawl” is not only an opportunity to represent Wisconsin, but to pave the way for women in the typically male-dominated field of barbecue.

“We’ve just gone and dug in and staked our own claim and put our own stamp on this craft,” Turner said. “I’m super proud to be able to support (Elena) and cheer for her as she pushes forward all of her traditional background.”

If I can show the next generation of Indigenous chefs that this is a space that not only can they exist in but they can thrive in, that’s a win for me

Elena Terry, “BBQ Brawl”

For Terry, the exciting thing about being a pitmaster in Wisconsin is that the opportunities are endless. 

“I believe that the beauty of the barbecue in Wisconsin is that we aren’t defined by parameters or a certain kind of style,” Terry said. “You can have something like a smoked T-bone and a bratwurst on the grill together, and that is Wisconsin. We have this beauty of diversity and celebration of food that I’m hoping Ashley and I have a chance to really represent on the show this season.”

New episodes of “BBQ Brawl” air Monday nights. The show is available to watch on the Food Network channel and on Max and Discovery+.