Doug Keiles displaying barbecued ribs

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As pitmaster of the Ribs Within competition barbecue team, Doug Keiles has filled his Hillsborough, New Jersey, home with about 150 trophies. In his driveway and yard, meanwhile, stand an armada of six smokers, three ceramic dome grills, two traditional charcoal grills, and a huge van with a trailer hitch for hauling the equipment to competitions from Maine to Texas.

Photography: 
Nick Romanenko

By a technicality, pork entered Doug Keiles’s life at an early age, and it never let go. His parents maintained a kosher home, but as Milt and Joy Keiles interpreted Jewish law, it was literally the home that was kosher. Set foot outside it, and anything goes. “I had an affinity for bacon and ribs, but especially ribs,” Keiles UCNB’87, SCILS’93 recalls. “Chinese spareribs, barbecued ribs, any ribs you could name. Wherever I could order ribs, I ordered ribs.”

Keiles has gone far beyond perusing restaurant menus. As pitmaster of the Ribs Within competition barbecue team, he has filled his Hillsborough, New Jersey, home with about 150 trophies. In his driveway and yard stand an armada of six smokers, three ceramic dome grills, two traditional charcoal grills, and a huge van with a trailer hitch for hauling the equipment to competitions from Maine to Delaware (with occasional forays to Texas, Kansas City, and Michigan). Ribs Within has won two Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) grand championships (2006 and 2012) and five non-KCBS grilling grand championships. In 2012, he appeared on the Food Network’s Chopped: Grill Masters and made it to the final round, dessert, finishing second overall.

Is this any way for a nice Jewish boy to earn a living? Actually, Keiles doesn’t earn his living from barbecue—yet. His two Rutgers degrees, both in communications with emphasis on data analysis, help him bring home the bacon. A natural number cruncher, he works by day from home as technology manager for a company that delivers newspapers around the country. But the growth of Ribs Within catering—and his expanding line of Ribs Within rubs, salt, and artisanal bacon—“absolutely, absolutely” bring closer the day when the only thing he crunches are his irresistible nuggets of candied bacon.

Barbecue was just a hobby for Keiles until one day in 2002. Feeling cocky, he brought some of his own ribs to his regular lunch spot, Famous Dave’s in New Brunswick. He had been boasting about his ribs to the owner, who viewed him as a crackpot. That day, he impressed not only the franchise owner, but also the Famous Dave’s corporate executive who happened to be there. The latter asked him if he entered barbecue competitions.

“I said, ‘They have barbecue competitions?’” It was late in the season, and he wasn’t able to enter his first event until 2003. Pretty soon he started amassing trophies. Now it has reached the point, he says, where “If it isn’t for a first place in a given category, I have no use for them, and I just give them away.”

Keiles is hard to miss in a crowd. A burly 6' 6", he will be the gregarious guy cooking in a tie-dyed T-shirt emblazoned with the Ribs Within logo featuring a pig with smoke coming out of its ears. “My team wears tie-dyed shirts not because we’re hippies,” he says, “but because I sweat a lot and I wipe my hands on my shirt all the time. I don’t like to wear aprons.”

For further information, visit ribswithin.com.