Levittown Woman Battles BBQ Vets on Travel Channel Show

Levittown resident Julie Merrigan was joined by the comfort of her friends and family last night in her home in Goldenridge as they watched her battle against three other seasoned BBQ vets for a $10,000 prize on the Travel Channel show, American Grilled.

Merrigan who left her job as the Director of a local preschool in October to cater with her husband full-time, found out about the show from one of her Facebook friends.

“I have a pretty extensive network and a Facebook friend of mine put the opportunity out there and I was like let me try this,” she recalled with a smile. “I’ve never done anything like that so let me see if I can.”

Merrigan filled out the application, completed a Skype interview and a phone call with an executive producer, and then was left in the dark.

“I didn’t hear anything for a couple weeks and so I got pretty nervous,” she said. “Then the phone rang and they asked if I could be in Annapolis in two days! So I packed up the car with my husband and kids and we went!”

Merrigan spent two long days shooting her episode of the show back in September and said she was more intimidated by the judges than by her competition. “I was so intimidated by my judge Diva Q., not by anything she said or did, but just because of who she is to me,” Merrigan said. “It was just such an honor to cook for her.”

American Grilled features four seasoned grillers each episode; each round the grillers are given a combination of tricky ingredients and challenged to make a BBQ dish that will wow the judges.

Merrigan, who competed in two of the show’s three rounds before being eliminated, was challenged to make dishes using artichokes, chicken, Maryland blue crabs, oysters, sausage, and even beaten biscuits.

“It was pretty cool to be given these kinds of ingredients. I can think pretty good on my feet usually, but even then I was feeling lost and nervous,” she said with a chuckle. “It was so much fun but also completely nerve wrecking.”

Merrigan, who joined by her husband competes in lots of local BBQ competitions said ‘grilling’ has been only a new-found obsession of hers. “I actually got into grilling through a dare,” she said while laughing. “I was living in New Mexico at the time and a friend of mine was cooking a brisket and a thought came to my mind, I could do that,” she recalled. “But he told me that BBQ is a man’s world and that women don’t have the patience or skill needed to do it, that next day I went out and bought everything I needed to start grilling on my own.”

Merrigan and her husband Tom own and operate 2 Little Piggys BBQ and Catering, a company that began strictly as a competition team and has now gone on to cater lots of events within Bucks, Montgomery, and Philadelphia county.

Despite filming the show being exhausting and hard work, Merrigan said she would do it again in a heart beat. “You never know, if they do another season you may just see me again,” she said.

As far as the friend of hers that challenged her to BBQ, Merrigan said, “We actually lost touch about 10 or so years ago, but maybe he will see the show and see everything that has come from it.”

American Grilled airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST on the Travel Channel