BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Charlie's Hard Times Honey Mustard

It's recession buster barbecue sauce! Sauce Crafters sells a wide variety of different sauces - most of them hot sauces, all of them with colorful names (I am especially fond of Sauce Bitch, and its accompanying press release "Want to Buy Some Sauce Bitch"). The theme here is "subprime lending crisis," with a down and out businessman burning stock certificates in a 55 gallon barrel on the label, and the following message.

If you're wondering just how "not rich" the price is, vis-a-vis our discussion last week, it's $5.00 for a 12 ounce bottle, which comes out to about 42 cents per ounce. That puts it somewhere in the neighborhood of the most expensive barbecue sauces not named Williams-Sonoma. Oh well, I suppose it's still a clever theme.

It's called a "honey mustard barbecue sauce," and in this case, the mustard is definitely the dominant part of the equation - this is no sissy sweet honey mustard. The bite of the mustard is bold, aided by vinegar, but there is just enough sweetness to keep it from being overwhelming. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a barbecue sauce made by a hot sauce company has some heat to it, too. Overall, this sauce has great flavor and a smooth consistency, and it would be a great complement to pork, but also probably pretty good with some chicken tenders.

Grade: B+