Los Slow Cookers grand champs again

Lane Riggs

Staff Writer

Uvalde’s Los Slow Cookers BBQ Team won the grand championship at the Shiner Half Moon Holidays barbecue cook-off with their third-place brisket, third-place ribs and 11th-place chicken. It’s the second time Los Slow Cookers – Luis Fernandez and Wade Carpenter – have won grand champion honors this year.

The event, hosted by the Shiner Chamber of Commerce, took place July 4-5.

Fernandez and Carpenter met at Southwest Texas Junior College, where Carpenter works as the public relations assistant and Fernandez is the business, industrial and technical studies division chairman.

The two were already friends when they started cooking together after Carpenter gained interest in barbecuing in 2014. As soon as the two started to cook, they began to enter competitions, starting with an event hosted by Neal’s in Concan the same year.

“We were just trying it out, but we placed sixth at Neal’s,” Fernandez said. “I was hooked after that.”

Since then, they have traveled across Texas to attend cook-offs in towns like Bishop, Lockhart, Kerrville, Pleasanton, Bandera and Shiner. Additionally, they also entered the 2017 American Royal hosted in Kansas City, Kansas.

Though Carpenter said others occasionally join the group, Fernandez and himself travel and compete regularly.

“We’ve entered probably close to 50 competitions,” Carpenter said. 

Of those competitions, both Carpenter and Fernandez said one of their most memorable wins was at the Turn ‘n’ Burn in Pleasanton a few years ago.

“We won grand champion out of 200 competitors,” Carpenter  said.

“It’s considered one of the biggest in the state and we were able to share it with our mentors, so it was very meaningful and memorable,” Fernandez added.

Similarly, Fernandez said competing and placing ninth at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo among 323 competitors in 2017 was also memorable.

This year, they won the grand championship at the Kerrville Easterfest cook-off for the second year in a row.

Carpenter said he didn’t know when they would next compete since Fernandez is working on a doctoral degree. Still, he looks forward to competing more – but not competing too much.

“We don’t have the time or money to compete every weekend, and doing that every weekend will get boring,” he said. “I don’t want to get burned out, I want to make it fun.”

For Carpenter, cooking brisket is the most rewarding. Fernandez typically cooks chicken and pork spare ribs.

“I like brisket because I thought it was the biggest challenge. It’s the king in Texas,” Carpenter explained. “It’s really a hobby.”

Fernandez echoed this sentiment, but about ribs.

“I took ribs as a challenge and set myself a challenge to get good at cooking ribs,” Fernandez said. “I kept on at it and took off with it.”

Carpenter’s goals are to travel further into west or east Texas, areas they haven’t routinely competed in. However, Carpenter has a go-with-the-flow attitude when it comes to attending competitions.

“We go when we can,” he said.

Fernandez, on the other hand, said he wants to go back to the American Royal.

“When we last competed, we were in our novice stage. Now we know how things are done. It would be awesome to go back and see how much we’ve improved,” he said.

Regardless, Fernandez has one aim: “I think it’s important to be as consistent as possible.”