Mark Lee: Six Butt BBQ Pitmaster and BBQ World Cup Qualifier

Mark Lee will tell you, more than once and without a trace of false modesty, that he is a hobbyist.

He and his wife are retired lawyers from Blaine, Minnesota, who cook competition barbecue off a pair of Weber Smokey Mountains, run somewhere between seven and eleven contests a year, and carry no sponsors.

That hobby just bought him a seat at the first BBQ World Cup, where 100 teams from around the world will cook in Las Vegas next April for $1,000,000.

Lee earned it the hard way, finishing Reserve Grand Champion at a Fargo, North Dakota qualifier packed with some of the best teams in the region.

He is also the first to point out how improbable that is for two people who did not know competition barbecue existed a little over a decade ago.

How Mark Lee Got Into Competition BBQ

Lee had grilled in the backyard his whole life without ever knowing there was a sport attached to it.

The discovery came off the television, from season one of BBQ Pitmasters, which he still calls the most authentic look at competition barbecue, and it lodged.

Around 2016 he started investigating, entered a pair of backyard contests at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds ten miles from his house, stepped up to a couple of master-series events later that year, and was cooking a full masters schedule by 2017.

He and his wife had both spent their careers as attorneys, and Mark credits the job with the way the two of them approach a cook, methodical and precise, a certain mindset he jokes comes from years of brainwashing.

Before he ever turned in a competition box, he drove to Kansas City to take a class from the veteran competitor Rod Gray.

Mark Lee's Setup: Two Weber Smokey Mountains and No Sponsors

What Lee wants people to hear from his story is that the barrier to entry is low.

In the early days he hauled his two Weber Smokey Mountains to contests in a rented U-Haul and staked an easy-up canopy at every stop, and it was enough to compete.

He still talks about it like a public service.

He hopes someone watching goes out, buys a Weber Smokey Mountain or a drum smoker, and dips a toe in, because the machine does not make the cook.

He is proof a person can start small, keep it simple, and still out-cook a stacked field.

Why the Team Is Called Six Butt BBQ

The name came from the same television that started all of it.

On an episode of the competition show BBQ Pit Wars, a cook announced that ordinarily his team cooked four pork butts, but this week they were going to cook six butts, and the line stuck in Lee's head.

His team became Six Butt BBQ.

The logo is a pig bent into the shape of the numeral 6, a curl of tail coming off the end.

Mark is cheerfully honest about the whole thing.

It makes absolutely no sense, he says, but that is our name.

Mark Lee's Ribs and the Brisket Win in Worthington

Lee's strong category moves around from season to season.

Some years it is brisket.

This year it is ribs, and the ribs have been very good, first place at two contests and a third at Fargo that anchored his Reserve Grand Champion run.

He is clear-eyed about how thin the margins are. Anyone who thinks every week will score the same, he says, is sadly mistaken, because judges' preferences shift and a fraction of a point swings everything.

His most satisfying category win came in Worthington two or three years ago, on a day the brisket simply felt right.

He turned in slices only, then carried the burnt ends over to the trailer of his friend Andy Braun of Aces High and let everyone take a taste.

A veteran cook who had competed for years tried one and said he would have turned those in.

Mark kicked himself for leaving them out of the box, right up until Six Butt won brisket that day.

Afterward the same cook found him and told him it was a good thing he had kept those burnt ends out.

How Six Butt BBQ Qualified in Fargo, North Dakota

Fargo was, in the same breath, his proudest day and the one that got away.

Six Butt finished Reserve Grand Champion at the Scheels Home & Hardware ND BBQ Championship, a long-running KCBS contest in South Fargo, and one of two teams out of that field to earn a place in the BBQ World Cup.

The team that edged him for the top spot, by six-tenths of a single point, was Blane Hunter of Porky Butts BBQ, another cook on his way to Las Vegas.

Lee does not tell it as a loss.

Blane Hunter, he says, is an extremely accomplished barbecue cook and a chef, and to finish six-tenths behind him he counts a tremendous accomplishment.

In a sport decided by decimals, he knows exactly how close he came and exactly how good the company was.

Mark Lee's Wife, Family and Barbecue Community

His wife is no footnote to any of this.

She is Mark's partner at the table and will be in the trailer beside him in Las Vegas, the two of them cooking the way they once built cases together.

Around them is a barbecue community Mark leans on without hesitation.

He shouts out Aaron and Missy at Northern Fire Grilling and Barbecue, who opened their supply store after years on the competition trail themselves, and Andy Braun of Aces High, a steady source of advice, and says there is nobody in the sport he could not turn to for help.

He returns the favor freely, and waves off the idea that he is guarding secrets.

His rib and brisket approach, he insists, is nothing fancy and nothing clever, just a lot of combinations of rubs and sauces.

They have two grown children with families of their own and four grandchildren, the oldest of whom just started college.

What Mark Lee Would Do With $1,000,000

Ask Lee what he would do with $1,000,000 and the answer is not about him.

He would make sure his four grandchildren are set for whatever academic road they choose, and, with a lawyer's dry arithmetic, he figures that after taxes that will take just about all of the rest of it, and he would be glad to spend it that way.

He cannot imagine the trip being anything but exciting.

Going to Las Vegas to cook beside world champions, some of them many times over, sounds to him like a blast.

He is also realistic about that field, because he has already cooked against it. At Worthington this year, four eventual BBQ World Cup qualifiers shared the grass: Six Butt, Jason Wagner of Wag's Backwoods BBQ, Nick Holman of Burnt Trees BBQ, and Darren Warth of Iowa's Smokey D's, the cook Lee names without a pause as the greatest of all time.

If Six Butt somehow wins the whole thing, do not expect a spectacle.

Mark and his wife will walk up, shake hands, and smile for the camera, because the courtroom trained the drama out of them.

And he will not hand you the sentimental answer about what makes great barbecue. It is not love, he says, because he has never seen a bottle of love on a store shelf.

It is perfect tenderness, and the only way to reach it is very precise cooking.

Two retired attorneys, a pig shaped like a 6, and a walk to the big stage in Las Vegas that Lee already plans to take to Queen's We Are the Champions.

Sources

Mark Lee, Road to 1 Million qualifier interview with Shannon Pruitt (BBQ World Cup). BWC Qualified Pitmasters Tracker (Six Butt BBQ, Reserve Grand Champion, Scheels Home & Hardware ND BBQ Championship; Blaine, Minnesota; head cook Mark Lee). Scheels Home & Hardware ND BBQ Championship (KCBS), South Fargo, North Dakota, May 2026: Six Butt BBQ took Reserve Grand Champion and a BBQ World Cup qualifying spot, finishing six-tenths of a point behind Grand Champion Porky Butts BBQ (Blane Hunter), also a qualifier. Team detail (the BBQ Pit Wars name origin and pig-shaped-6 logo, the Weber Smokey Mountain start, the ribs season, the Worthington brisket, his wife and cooking partner, two grown children and four grandchildren, the Northern Fire Grilling and Barbecue community, the Darren Warth and Worthington-field references, and the walkout song) from the qualifier interview. Darren Warth Barbecue Hall of Fame background via WHO-13, Des Moines. Hero photo: Mark Lee and his wife in Six Butt BBQ team shirts, BBQ World Cup pitmaster program.