Barbecue king Moe Cason started making barbecue as a hobby. Now he has a cookbook.

Since 2006, Big Moe Cason has competed in more than 270 barbecue competitions across 35 states. He might win for his spareribs, his brisket or his pork shoulder, earning multiple grand and reserve grand championships along the way. It’s quit a feat, especially since he taught himself everything he knows about barbecue, from the type of wood he uses for smoking to how to make a classic rub good enough to sell in grocery stores.

Cason started his hobby while working full time as a water treatment operator at Des Moines Water Works on overnight shifts. Before that, he served on the USS Missouri, an Iowa class battleship nicknamed “Big Mo,” while he was in the U.S. Navy.

He earned his reputation as a pitmaster and competed on TV on shows such as “BBQ Pitmasters,” “BBQ Pit Wars,” “Smoked,” “The Kitchen” and “Chopped.” Sometimes he’s a contestant. Sometimes a judge. Always he’s full of personality.

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His latest foray on television took him to the National Geographic series “World of Flavor with Big Moe Cason,” where he went on a journey to connect American barbecue to open-flame cooking in cultures around the world. His travels on the show took him to Charleston, South Carolina, Colombia, Louisiana, and the Bahamas in four episodes that released in 2022.

Now, Big Moe Cason takes the next step in his barbecue journey, launching his first cookbook, “Big Moe’s Big Book of BBQ” with 75 of his favorite recipes from across the years.

“And yes, it’s still crazy to me that after more than 20 years working the night shift at a water company in Des Moines, Iowa, my full-time job is now barbecue,” he said in the introduction of his book.

How Moe Cason went from kid to pitmaster

The Des Moines native who grew up near East High School learned cooking techniques from his grandmother, Margaret, who always had a can of Crisco on her stove. Marlando “Moe” Cason went to her house with his sister after school and always found the kitchen a space to observe her combining ingredients and turning out simple dishes.

Margaret, who never wrote down her recipes and made dishes from memory, raised 17 children in Union Park, including Moe’s mother, Mary, who had a knack for replicating her mother’s recipes.

“My mom worked two jobs as a seamstress in Des Moines from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m.,” Cason said. “At grandma’s house, she would watch us until my mom got us. Margaret Cason was an awesome cook. Everything she made was great.”

Cason started grilling at age 12, cooking hot dogs, sunfish, a rabbit or squirrel, bass and crappie. Once he got out of the Navy, he met his wife Nena, and settled down in Des Moines. That’s when he bought a Brinkmann grill from Walmart and started experimenting.

“I love to cook. I’m a humble man but I’m a proud man,” Cason said.

He saw barbecue competitions on television and wanted to try his hand at them. The National Pork Board had one coming up in Des Moines, and Cason decided to try it. But first he needed a pit. He didn’t have the money to buy one, so he decided to flip a house to earn the money.

He bought a house for $24,000 on Kingman Boulevard, four homes away from the 800-square-foot ranch he bought after he got out of the Navy. He renovated it using materials from Habitat for Humanity and sweat equity from friends, selling it a year later for $89,900.

Cason bought a trailer and a smoker with the proceeds.

Moe Cason becomes a barbecue champion

From there, he entered his first barbecue contest with the National Pork Board, barbecuing a whole hog, shoulder, ribs, and a pork loin. “That first cookoff was tiresome, but I was motivated,” he said. “I learned a lot.”

His second contest in Centerville had him barbecuing pork, brisket, ribs and chicken.

And then at his third contest Marshalltown, he won first place for his ribs. “The rest was history,” Cason said.

He named his company Ponderosa Barbecue and traveled to 20-some competitions a year in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon. His decorated barbecue resume includes three perfect “180” scores for his chicken, ribs, and pork shoulder as well as a second-place finish for his sauce at the 2012 Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational.

Cason spent a lot of time at Penzeys spices when the company had a store in West Des Moines, keeping notebooks filled with dates and recipes and concoctions for the herbs and spices he mixed.

Now he sells his rubs and sauces at Hy-Vee, Winn-Dixie, Ace Hardware, and Scheels. “Hy-Vee was the only one I had to knock on their door,” Cason said. Everyone else knocked on his door.

Todd’s on Northeast 14th Street in Des Moines still produces his rubs, and he still shops for his woods at Hawgeyes BBQ in Ankeny.

At one time, in 2021, he planned to open a restaurant in River Bend, but financing fell through for the developer who wanted to renovate the former North Des Moines City Hall, across from Tacos La Familia on North Sixth Avenue in Des Moines.

Now he doesn’t want to open a restaurant. “You have to be the man or woman behind the product,” he said. Occasionally you can find him at a pop-up, like one he held at Mullets in Des Moines. The line reached the street at one point, he said. ”I don’t do that very often.”

“I’m like a dude who likes cigars, rifles, I like eating steak, I like eating seafood. I’ve always been a grinder,” Cason said. “I’m a traveler. I like to see the world. Nobody has given me anything. It’s all about who you are. I’m a good dude.”

Cason said barbecue has taken him around the world ― Singapore, Canada to teach a class, Alaska at Eielson Air Force Base south of Fairbanks, Hawaii, U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea, Germany, The Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden. “It’s all because of barbecue,” he said.

“One of the greatest compliments I had was when someone comes up and meets you and says, ‘You’re everything I thought you would be.’”

How the pitmaster Moe Cason becomes a cookbook author

Cason’s cookbook, “Big Moe’s Big Book of BBQ,” came out on Tuesday, ahead of Mother’s Day and Memorial Day later in May, tips of the hat to his own mother, Mary Cason, his grandmother Margaret, his wife, Nena, and his time in the Navy.

Last November, Nena died of cancer, leaving Cason and his four daughters — Sage, Sedalia, Mahalia and Montgomery. He includes recipes from all of them in his cookbook.

This isn’t a cookbook for those who want to become championship pitmasters. Instead, Cason shares tips on how to be better at backyard barbecue cookouts with info on smokers, woods, and equipment you need from pink butcher paper to a good knife. He dissects which cuts of meat to choose, how to select it and then age it, with a section dedicated to ribs. He debates whether to sauce ribs or not (he said that traditionally, they aren’t sauced), and shows readers how to cook brisket and get a good a bark.

He includes tips on rubs (including how it’s all about the rub and not the sauce), sharing recipes for Memphis mops, Kansas City pork ribs sauce, turkey brine, rubs, and even beef stock.

Then he dips into his mains and meats, showcasing burgers, pork balls, Buffalo steak tacos, lemon-butter speckled trout, chicken and sausage gumbo, and his wife’s recipe for pepper steak. Of course, barbecue plays a huge role here, with looks at pork butts, chicken wings, smoked turkey, grilled duck, and even RAGBRAI cheesesteaks. Cason said he rode RAGBRAI as a kid but now only works as a vendor along the route.

If he could guide readers to one recipe, it would be his brisket. “That was the one meat that I really, really put effort in. We never had that growing up,” he said, noting how the tough cut from the chest muscle needs a lot of love to break it down into tender brisket.

Readers can find recipes for his smoked ham and butter beans, cornbread stuffing, and black-eyed peas with sausage, as well as desserts such as sugar crème pie and grilled plantains with a rum butter glaze.

Beautiful color photography from Jody Horton from Austin, Texas, accompanies every recipe and stories about Cason and his family.

What’s next for Moe Cason

The competitive fire hasn’t died down. Next week, Cason returns to the road for Memphis and what he calls the “historic and powerful” World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, where he competes for the eighth time. He landed in the top 10 for his pork shoulder three times and earned a third-place finish in 2023 for his pork shoulder.

“I made the top 10 a few times. I made the finals last year. The only contest I want to win and walk that stage is Memphis in May.”

Where to find and follow Big Moe Cason

Known for: Barbecue

Facebook: 140,000 followers at facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064667263356

Instagram: 149,000 followers at instagram.com/bigmoecason

YouTube: 27,000 subscribers at youtube.com/channel/UChWjjZDOUbXvcwLRptXFMtw

Website: moecasonbbq.com

Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Have a dish she should try? You can reach out to her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Moe Cason publishes "Big Moe's Big Book of BBQ" with National Geographic