Secret life of police

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann

After Senior Sergeant Adrian Filzek received a Weber charcoal barbeque as a wedding present, it sat in his garage collecting dust for months because he thought it was too difficult to operate.

“I looked for the button to turn it on and where to connect the gas hose to,” Sen Sgt Filzek said.

“I soon realised it was a charcoal barbeque and I wasn’t interested in it because of the hard work involved.”

With that false start to his time on the tongs, it’s hard to imagine how Sen Sgt Filzek has since turned into an award-winning competitive barbeque pitmaster.

Sen Sgt Filzek – who works in the governance space at the Victoria Police Academy and spent most of his 21-year police career in general duties – eventually figured out how to work the Weber and has not looked back since.

“It just grew exponentially into an obsession about cooking over charcoal,” he said.

His wife helped foster the fanaticism early on by getting him into a barbeque masterclass.

Sen Sgt Adam Filzek is more than handy with a pair of tongs, picking up first place finishes at a number of barbecue competitions.

“I got talking with other people there about the mammoth smokers they’ve got, and I realised it was time to upgrade,” Sen Sgt Filzek said.

“My very generous wife saw me in the barbeque store pretty much drooling over this massive offset smoker and she said, ‘Yes, you can get it’.”

He now owns eight different barbeques and smokers, which all belong in a space in his backyard signposted as “Pit Lane”, right next to his outdoor bar.

“My wife is really good because she knows that it’s my escape from life and she’ll send me outside to my toy pen, if you like, to play out there for a few hours,” he said.

Sen Sgt Filzek and a close friend take part in Victorian and interstate barbeque competitions,

including against former Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton, under the team name Fahrenheit 205, a nod to the perfect internal temperature for beef brisket.

Their specialty dish, pork ribs, have won them a number of first places.

While the key to their award-winning pork ribs includes liquid injections, plenty of butter, maple syrup and a top-secret glaze, Sen Sgt Filzek has another secret, if unconventional, cooking weapon.

“Country and Western music played in the background makes them a lot more tender. I swear by it,” he said.

While delicious smoked meat is a brilliant reward for many hours of hard work, Sen Sgt Filzek often doesn’t eat much of the fruits of his labour.

“For me, it’s more about the journey and an escape from day-to-day life,” he said.

“I’m pretty lucky I haven’t taken any mental health tumbles in my 21 years in the job, and I think having this as a hobby, something that I’m so passionate about that I can escape to, is one of the reasons for that.

“It’s a form of mindfulness for me.”