I don’t know how the chefs did it. The temperature hovered around 98-degrees in Madison Square Park — and that was standing in the long lines, not near the blistering hot BBQ grills where the pitmasters did their craft.

The crowds didn’t seem to be fazed by the heat at the sixth annual celebration of mouthwatering barbecue — some waited hours to sample the foods that the 14 top pitmasters produced for the event. Smart New Yorkers purchased a $100 fast pass — the food equivalent of E-Z pass — that got them to the fast service area with a much shorter line. Worth it for the time savings alone.TB_BigAppleBBQ_3.jpg

My favorite BBQ of all I sampled was adorable Chris Lilly’s pulled pork shoulder bbq sandwich served with mustard coleslaw (Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur, AL). Chris’s sauce was almost as sweet as he TB_BigAppleBBQ_1.jpgis.

I downed almost each and every morsel — and that’s after making the rounds to many of the others pitmasters including Ken Callaghan’s Kansas City ribs (Blue Smoke, NYC), Jim Hagood’s pulled pork shoulder (BlackJack BBQ, Charleston, SC), Ed Mitchell’s whole hog with cole slaw (The Pit, Raleigh, NC) and City Grocery’s Smoked Crawfish & Okra Hush Puppies.

Yes, yes, I did consume quite a bit of BBQ, so once it was over, I walked a couple miles in the heat (stopping occasionally in air-conditioned stores) to walk off those many delicious calories.

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(In this photo, foodies might recognize food writer Ed Levine salivating while Chris Lilly chopped — with a humongous cleaver — the meat for our sandwiches.)