Alyson Lupinetti is proving that “like father, like daughter” definitely applies to barbecue. Not only does the 27 year-old Mount Laurel pitmaster follow in her late father Butch’s footsteps all over the country, she wins awards like him, too. On the road for seasonal competitions with the Butch’s Smack Your Lips BBQ  team, Lupinetti already has 100-plus awards to add to her father’s lifetime of over 600.

The family talent isn’t a surprise: Butch grew up Jersey Italian on a farm in Pemberton. “There was always cooking going on,” says Lupinetti. “He grew up cooking pigs underground.” For her part, Lupinetti grew up assisting her dad in low-and-slow school night cook-outs and—occasionally—sharing the backseat of the family car with a whole pig (see below).