DALLAS — It started with conversation at parties. Barbecue, it seemed, just always came up.
After a friend posted a picture of brisket on Facebook, Neghae Mawla commented asking when they were going to have a competition. Zahid Ahmad replied that he received permission from his wife to host one. And so, a few weeks later, in 2017, six guys prepared brisket and brought it over to Ahmad’s house.
A few dozen of their friends showed up to judge. They used Survey Monkey to vote on different criteria (taste, tenderness, smoke ring and more) and determined a winner, who walked away with a first place medal.
But what began as a chummy competition between friends (and a group chat called “Smoking Hot BBQ Pitmasters”) soon snowballed into a business with a website, social media accounts and merchandise.
The three founders, Ahmad, an endocrinologist, Mawla, a nephrologist, and Rehan Jaffrey, a businessman, are not your average pitmasters. They are Muslim, and they describe a love of barbecue that was sometimes complicated by their faith.
Barbecue competitions, Facebook groups and recipes online often contain pork and sometimes alcohol, which are prohibited in Islam. The meat is also usually not halal, meaning it doesn’t follow Islamic guidelines —similar to those of kosher laws — for how meat should be prepared.
Their group chat was propelled into a community chat, called Halal BBQ Pitmasters. Then it became a business because of a growing desire among Muslims for halal barbecue, they said.
The Whatsapp group chat
After a successful competition at Ahmad’s house, the group decided to plan another one for the next year. Eleven teams competed to see who could make the best poultry at a park, and they brought in over 200 attendees. The next year, they hosted a “meat on a stake” themed competition at the Islamic Center of Frisco that drew over 1,000 attendees.
For these contests, they recruited professional chefs as volunteer judges.
“Some of them were purge cooking, some of them were doing an offset smoker,” said John Cobos, executive chef at Brasão Brazilian Steakhouse who judged the competition. “A lot of them knew what they were doing.”
After the poultry competition in 2018, Ahmad, Mawla and Jaffrey turned their small group chat into a community one on Whatsapp. There, Muslims could discuss barbecuing tools and technique and where they could find the best halal meat and restaurant barbecue.
At first, competition to enter the chat was fierce. Until this year, Whatsapp only allowed 256 members in a group.
Whatsapp has since upped the limit to 512. There are currently 335 members on the main chat, and several spinoff chats, including regional chats in Texas, southern California, the United Kingdom and South Africa. There are also technique chats for pellet smokers, pizza and sous vide.
“There’s a vegan barbecue group,” Jaffrey joked.
“No, that’s like the least popular thing,” Ahmad clarified. “I actually do vegetarian stuff, but I don’t tell anybody.”
“Zahid does Meatless Mondays,” Mawla teased.
Members chat in the groups all day long, with anywhere from 200 to 1,000 messages per day. Texas style brisket is a favorite subject, especially for members outside the state, Ahmad said.
While there are different opinions about what exactly makes meat halal — sometimes referred to as zabiha — most scholars say it should meet a few requirements: the animal is cut a certain way and drained of blood, it’s killed with God’s name and a prayer that signifies it was sacrificed for sustenance, and it was treated with respect while living.
But Ahmad, Mawla and Jaffrey try to keep religious politics out of the chats. “We’re not a fatwa group,” Mawla said. “How you define halal, we’ll leave up to you. Let’s just enjoy the cooking process of it.”
A 13-spice rub
Halal BBQ Pitmasters has competed three times in the North Texas EggFest, which they won each time, and once in a kosher sub-competition of the competitive Kansas City Barbeque Society.
The group formulated their own rubs for the competition, incorporating international flavors like sumac, Kashmiri red chili and bird’s eye chili, atypical of a standard rub, which usually features salt, pepper and garlic.
At their first EggFest in 2019, the team made Texas tandoori chicken and sumac picanha steak. They won first place out of 20 teams.
Many of their competitors were curious about their rubs. And while members of the Whatsapp chats had suggested selling their rubs, it was their competitors that convinced Mawla the rubs would sell.
“Having all your friends’ support was a known,” he said. “Having 200 to 300 white people in a parking lot in a random competition that have no relation to you say, ‘This is fantastic!’, that’s what got me convinced.”
They spent a year testing their Texas Tandoori Rub. The final model has 13 spices, including kashmiri chili powder, turmeric and natural mesquite smoke. The breadth and variety of spices in their rubs, some of which are difficult to source, is what makes them different from others on the market, they said.
They ordered 500 bottles of the Texas Tandoori Rub. Within two days, they sold out. Ahmad, Mawla and Jaffrey don’t make any money off of the rubs and instead donate the revenue to charity or invest it in research and development.
“We’re not chefs. I mean, we’re Instagram chefs,” Ahmad said. “I think it’s OK to not be a trained chef … If you’re focused on one small thing, like just trying to make a good tandoori rub, you can do it.”
They have since added other rubs to their inventory, including a Yemeni-Indian-inspired rub and a Peri Peri-Teriyaki rub (Jaffrey grew up in England, where Nando’s South African peri peri flavor enjoys broad popularity).
The group’s branding as halal barbecue is a chance to both encourage Muslims to join and debunk misconceptions at competitions.
Most people’s “experience with Islam or Muslims is just what they see on TV — we’re terrorists or the bad guys,” Ahmad said. “And I think this shows that we’re multi-dimensional just like everybody else. And we like good food, and we’re more alike with them than we are different.”
Learn more about Halal BBQ Pitmasters at halalpitmasters.com.
