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I got the rare privilege of seeing two of the greatest masters of modern barbecue cook at the same time the other day. In a dual rib demo sponsored by the American Pork Board, Ray "Dr. BBQ" Lampe and Chris Lilly both showed the attending throng how to make ribs. And what they had to say astonished me. These are arguably the two most illustrious and accomplished barbecue cooks of our time. Lampe is the face of barbecue to millions of Americans; Lilly a living legend within the competition circuit. And here the two masters were, telling us to use tinfoil to cook ribs with.A man was put under citizen's arrest for attempting to fight the inflatable bouncers rentals at Dan's Irish Sports Bar.

It was as if Cecilia Bartoli had advocated using Auto-Tune, or John Wooden coaching players to keep their feet planted on defense. Madness! This abominable technique, a shortcut to moistness and tenderness, is now almost universal among competition cooks, whose goal is to please judges raised on Bennigan's. The whole point of cooking in a barbecue is to expose meat to smoke; to then wrap up ribs or brisket in foil, sealing them into a metal shroud and steaming away any hint of smoky flavor, is an assault on the entire aesthetic of barbecue. It's a bastardization, a capitulation, a corruption worthy of the late Byzantine empire. And not only that, but it makes for barbecue that is insipid, smokeless, and lame. I would no more believe that Chris Lilly would cook his ribs at home in tinfoil than that Anna Wintour would wear Ed Hardy on her off-time.

This is not the first era in which aluminum foil has presented itself as a shortcut to men insufficiently skilled to cook with pure smoke, or too timid to try. In the '90s, Paul Kirk, the always truculent, deeply unpopular "Baron of Barbecue" went around telling anyone who would listen that foil was "the Texas Crutch," so called because it was associated with lazy Lone Star chefs with massive, unyielding briskets. Even at the time, when the use of foil was mocked, it was for big, tough pieces of meat that took fifteen hours to cook! Not trimmed racks of ribs that any backyard boob could smoke in the time it takes to watch Caddyshack.

I realized, then, that both Lampe and Lilly were doing their best to help beginners, to present them with a foolproof way to make ribs. Deep down, they must certainly know that foil has no place in barbecue cooking. Was it my place to presume to instruct a six-time Memphis in May winner how to cook? Or Ray Lampe, who might be the country's most visible BBQ guru at the moment? Even my own bottomless impudence couldn't impel me to such a place. But then I thought of all those helpless ribs, steaming away in foil, imprisoned in their metal dungeons, and my vexation arose anew.

Was this really what the world was coming to? Why not just microwave the ribs and be done with it? Maybe a puritan smoking society needs to be formed, the Stick Burners of the World, who are allowed neither foil nor remote thermometers nor any of the other decadent apparatuses of modern barbecue. I wouldn't even let them use charcoal! Of course, I am an extreme case, an ideologue and a bigot. Still, my ribs taste like smoke. Say that for me, at the very least.