WHO: Kareem El-Ghayesh of Austin’s KG BBQ and Sloan Rinaldi of Houston’s Texas Q.

WHAT: The third season of Netflix’s reality competition show Barbecue Showdown, in which nine pitmasters vie to win $50,000, premieres on July 4.

WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Texas barbecue is no stranger to the limelight, nor to Netflix programming—you may have seen it featured on shows like Chef’s Table and Somebody Feed Phil. But this month, Lone Star State pitmasters take on a more ambitious edge by competing in the third season of Netflix’s reality show Barbecue Showdown.

The show, hosted by actress and comedian Michelle Buteau and judged by Los Angeles pitmaster Kevin Bludso and Mississippi chef Melissa Cookston, pits eight to nine contestants from across the country—often professional chefs or familiar faces on the competition-barbecue circuit—against one another in a series of challenges to win $50,000. While Texans have appeared on the show before (Joey Victorian of Victorian’s Barbecue, in Mart, was on season two), as the popularity of Barbecue Showdown has increased, it’s become an even better national showcase for all the talent the state has to offer.

While many pitmasters apply to be on Barbecue Showdown, El-Ghayesh and Rinaldi were handpicked by producers to compete on this season, which filmed near Atlanta in December.

Rinaldi was five months into her recovery from hip-replacement surgery when she decided to go on the show. For almost a month, she and El-Ghayesh filmed for up to twenty hours a day. “When they said ‘That’s a wrap’ the last time, I had nothing left,” Rinaldi said. “I couldn’t have done one more take. I couldn’t have taken another step or said another word.”

El-Ghayesh relied on his skills, knowledge, and speed to get through the grueling challenges. While dishes like his pomegranate-glazed pork ribs and brisket rice bowl have won over the customers of his KG BBQ truck, in Austin, the judges had a little trouble getting acclimated to some of his Egyptian twists on Texas barbecue. “I was approached with both the judges thinking that I put too much garlic in my food, and I was like, ‘In my country, that is never an issue,’ ” he said.

Prior to opening KG BBQ, El-Ghayesh was working in finance in Cairo. It wasn’t until 2012, when he was visiting Texas, that he had a taste of Rudy’s Bar-B-Q, an experience he describes as “a complete sensory overload of smell, taste, and it was amazing.” For six years, El-Ghayesh learned all about barbecue by working at joints for free and hosting pop-ups.

Rinaldi, on the other hand, was born into barbecue, with three prior generations of pitmasters in her family. Initially, she shied away from that lifestyle and worked in commercial construction for 32 years. She eventually realized that the barbecue blood was too strong to avoid, and she opened her truck, Texas Q, in the Houston suburb of Kingwood in 2021. “To be able to tap into what my family has done for generations, and find that I have a natural gift for that, it’s been a real blessing,” she said. “And I feel so happy to be able to pursue that.”

These two pitmasters reflect the state of Texas barbecue today: a combination of traditional methods and more-global ingredients. It will be fascinating to see how the judges and audience respond. But no matter how barbecue evolves, it still maintains its unifying soul.

“This show is the epitome of what barbecue is about,” Rinaldi said,“in that you can bring the poorest and the richest man together at the same table, experiencing the same culinary food, and that is going to be barbecue.”

The eight episodes of season three of Barbecue Showdown air on July 4 on Netflix.