Melissa Cookston is known as the “Winningest Woman in Barbecue.” The Mississippi native is the ultimate pitmaster, having won numerous competitions, including seven world barbecue championships (so far). She is a successful restaurateur, the first woman to be inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame, and the author of three barbecue cookbooks. Yet she still feels she has more to learn.
“I came from small-town Mississippi, just a wide spot in the road really,” Cookston said. There were no traffic lights in town. When she was a kid, her mother would drive her to Memphis, Tennessee, which was hours away, just to eat ribs. Cookston and her grandfather were also “big buddies,” she said. When she was a kid, he would take her along to meet friends at a coffee shop, “where all the old men gathered to swap farming stories and fish lies.” The java joint also doubled as the local barbecue joint, and, as often as not, they’d finish up with barbecue sandwiches. Cookston added that her grandfather was “the one that taught me my core values, … how to be a good loser, but even more importantly, how to be a good winner.”
