This was our 16th year attending the best barbecue shootout in the great state of Texas: the World Championship Goat Cook-Off held each Labor Day weekend out in Brady.

Brady’s just down the road from Mercury, the geographical center of the Lone Star state and the pure epicenter of hospitality in a region famous for cracking open cold cans of Pearl beer for outsiders.

Strangers don’t stay strangers long out in Brady and we expect hospital maternity wards are filled to bursting nine months after the big competition.

Crowds near 10k strong roil through the town’s Richards Park each year as over 200 teams show and prove to establish a cabrito hierarchy in McCulloch County, the number one goat producing region in the US.

We’ll get the list of winners up soon but for now here’s a gallery of images from the 2016 World Championship BBQ Goat Cook-Off:

Beef heart was the ‘mystery meat’ that each of the teams cooks for a separate portion of the competition. We ate chicken fried, grilled, sauteed and smoked versions of this dish as the event wore on. We love offal and it was a real treat to get to eat a few plates of heart.

There’s always plenty goat on offer from the cook teams as you stroll around the park. Goat is a tricky beast to cook with fire as it’s extraordinarily lean and requires a delicate touch from the pit bosses. We ate a lot of bad goat but the great ribs, brisket and cold beer more than made up for the occasional tough plate of cabrito.

List of winners