BARBECUE SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Mississippi

Fear not, Mississippians! Mississippi Barbecue Sauce actually appears to have been named after the river and not the state. Norm Vaughan was an OTR truck driver from Ohio, whose regular route took him up and down the Mississippi river. A barbecue enthusiast, Vaughan claims to have stopped at "every rib joint and barbecue shack" along the way. But in all of those stops, he never did find a sauce that was truly to his liking. So he decided to make it himself. He sold the big rig and developed Mississippi Barbecue Sauce in 1993. By 1995, the brand had been sold to the Fremont Company, an Ohio outfit that originally specialized in sauerkraut, but eventually expanded to include a variety of different food products. Norm claims that the sauce "blends the sweetness of Chicago, the mellow tang of Memphis, and the spices of New Orleans." I claim that it tastes like a slightly spicier version of Kraft. The sauce has that generic sweet, ketchupy, liquid-smokey flavor that we've come to expect from MOR supermarket barbecue sauces. But the worst thing to me is the texture - a repulsive, overly thick, glopppy quality. I feel like I would need to melt this if I were going to serve it (which I'm not). Overall, a complete disappointment.

Grade: D