The Governor's Cup winners and 2019 World Championship Steak Cook-Off champs are again from Magnolia.
Announced Saturday evening, Delta Waterfowl from Magnolia were crowned the mightiest steak cookers out of an 80-team, multi-state field. The winning group was also awarded a $4,000 check. The awards ceremony took place inside SAU's Beyond the Campus, next to the brand new, but unusable Square Park stage area Saturday due to an evening full of torrential rains and heavy thunderstorm activity.
The win caps off the second year in a row that a local team took the coveted Governor’s Cup. CMC Steel’s Mill Time Grillers won in 2018.
The three-man Delta Waterfowl group was made up of head cook Zac Brasher and team members Hunter Caldwell and Cody Caldwell. They represented the Backwater Chapter of the gamebird-centric national conservation foundation. The organization plans to donate all of its Saturday night steak winnings back into Magnolia nonprofit groups.
“At Delta, we do a lot of stuff for the community -- give money to the [MHS] Trap Team and a little bit of everything,” said Brasher in a quick speech following the win. “We just want to let everyone know that this money will be going back into the community.”
The head cook added that he did not know specifically yet where the funds would be donated, saying that he first needed to speak with the local Delta Waterfowl committee.
This year was Delta Waterfowl’s first foray into the Magnolia steak cooking competition. As a rookie crew, they blew the other teams “out of the woods,” according to World Championship Steak Cook-Off Commissioner David Nelson, after amassing a huge, 6.2-point cushion between themselves and the next highest scoring team.
When asked their secret to cooking such a good steak, without giving too much away, Hunter stated that he did not think their methods were anything revolutionary.
“We just do what everybody else does,” he said.
The Delta Waterfowl team member later added that the rig used to cook the championship steak was “nothing special” and “just some homemade, charcoal grill.”
“It’s just something like everybody else has,” he said.
Bill McBroom was first runner-up and a winner of $2,000. Smoke Mafia followed at second runner-up and won $1,250. Finishers that also received checks were Walker Tree Farm at third runner-up and South Georgia Smokers at fourth runner-up. They were awarded $750 and $500, respectively.
The remaining steak cook-off winners were:
- Big Jon’s Big Eats – fifth runner-up
- Family Tradition – sixth Runner-up
- Double B Grillers – seventh runner-up
- Unknown – eighth runner-up
- Smoke House Rats – ninth runners-up
The eighth runner-up winner was not present at Saturday night’s awards ceremony. The team was also not immediately known due to blind judging and scoring on numbered entires instead of names. Blossom Festival Director Ellie Baker mentioned Saturday that she knew of at least one team that left early and did not attend the ceremony. Organizers stated they would attempt to find out the name of the missing winners.
To honor 30 years of Magnolia’s Blossom Festival, a Certified Angus Beef gift basket was also issued to the team that placed 30th at Saturday’s World Championship Steak Cook-Off. The “winners” were last year’s first-runner up team of Lei’d Back Ranch.
Annually, the cooking teams that travelled the furthest are recognized. In 2019, six crews ventured to the festival Georgia. When Ya Hot Ya Hot, a Magnolia team headed by Danny and Becky Jones, was the first team to register this year.