BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Loveless "Sweet with a Bite" BBQ Sauce

I am a big fan of the Loveless Cafe. Having spent most of my life on Nashville's west side, I have eaten more than my share of biscuits and country ham at this venerable landmark, and I still think it's one of the best breakfasts in the city. Their extensive renovations a couple of years ago brought a lot of new things, one of them being barbecue. I have never brought myself to try it. Maybe one of these days I will. But for now I just stick to the proven winners - fried chicken, meatloaf, hashbrown casserole, country ham and red-eye gravy, and of course those incredible biscuits and homemade preserves.

I did, however, happen to pick up a jar of Loveless' "Sweet with a Bite" BBQ sauce when I was there the other night. I really wasn't sure what to expect. On one hand, this restaurant has a 50 year tradition of great southern cooking. On the other hand, they have almost zero barbecue tradition to speak of.

Well, it pains me to have to report to you that this sauce is considerably off the mark. It is neither very "sweet", nor possessive of any significant "bite". In fact, it actually tastes just like ketchup. And I don't mean ketchup-based. I mean, it tastes just like ketchup. There might be a tiny hint of vinegar tanginess, and there are a few sparse chunks of bell pepper floating around. But still...ketchup. Very disappointing.

Grade: C-

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce

I thought it would be fun, and maybe beneficial, to take a look at some sauces that are widely available in supermarkets. One that I've always been curious about is Sweet Baby Ray's. It has kind of a plain looking label, which is intriguing to me. Also, I like the name.

For the most part, any time I buy barbecue sauce from the grocery store, I have low expectations. Barbecue sauces produced for the masses tend to have very little depth of flavor, relying instead on liquid smoke and pedal-to-the-metal sweetness. They all seem to be variations of KC Masterpiece, which has, for all intents and purposes, become the archetype of barbecue sauce in mainstream America.

On the surface, Sweet Baby Ray's in no exception. It is an unabashedly Kansas City style sauce - thick and dark, sweet and smoky. However, I found the sweetness to be lighter and more playful than the cloying assault normally associated with mass-marketed barbecue sauce. It has no spiciness to speak of, but there is plenty of smoke flavor. And a refreshing bit of vinegar twang rounds things out.

All in all, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. This is not a bad barbecue sauce at all. In fact, it is actually better than some of the highfalutin' sauces we have examined here. If you must buy barbecue sauce at a grocery store, Sweet Baby Ray's is not a bad way to go.

Grade: B

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Tommy Boy Bust 'n Bourbon BBQ Sauce

Whiskey is certainly no stranger as an ingredient in barbecue sauce. Shoot, as anyone who's ever visited the gift shops in Lynchburg knows, Whiskey is no stranger in any number of food products. But rarely is it featured as prominently as it is here. This is upstart Berry Hill eatery Tommy Boy Sausage Company's signature sauce - Bust 'n Bourbon BBQ Sauce. Used properly, bourbon can certainly be a tasty condiment component. In this case, I can't make up my mind whether its application may be a bit heavyhanded for a barbecue sauce. The smoky sweet essence of the bourbon is the first thing you smell when you open the jar, and it's the first thing you taste as well. The consistency of the sauce is medium, lightly coating a spoon. There are visible bits of spice suspended in the sauce. In addition to the bourbon flavor, there are notes of onion, apple and citrus. Bottom line: as an all-purpose barbecue sauce, this probably isn't what you're looking for, but for certain applications, it just might work.

Grade: B-

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Legend Apple Cider BBQ Sauce

"Legend" is a line of barbecue sauces produced and marketed by a company called Seasons Harvest. Barbecue sauce is but one part of a diverse lineup of condiments and accoutrements which seem to be aimed squarely at the foodie crowd. This particular sauce is recommended specifically for pork (there are other sauces for beef, fowl, and seafood).

Upon uncapping, one can immediately smell the apples - it smells kind of like you just opened a jar of apple butter, in fact. The sauce is fairly bright in color and fairly thick in consistency, with a puree texture containing no bits floating within. And as strong as the sauce smells of apples, it tastes even moreso. It's very sweet, bursting with the taste of fresh apples.

Mike Mills, I do believe you've been out-apple'd.

There are hints of onion and tomato that keep it from simply tasting like applesauce. There is no apparent spiciness at all.

Okay, but how good is it? It does have a pleasantly fresh and natural taste, but...very fruity. I tend to think it might go better with something like grilled pork chops, rather than barbecue.

Grade: B

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Blues Hog Gourmet Finishing Sauce

It's no secret that I'm a Blues Hog fan. Blues Hog Original is as good as any barbecue sauce I've ever tasted. Blues Hog Tennessee Red ain't so bad either. So imagine my enthusiasm when I learned about...Blues Hog Gourmet Finishing Sauce! Gourmet Finishing Sauce? Shoot, 'ol Bill has gone and gotten highfalutin on us!

The sauce smells and looks almost exactly like BH Original. The finishing sauce may be just a little bit more viscous, if that's possible. And upon first taste, the finishing sauce tastes very similar, too. But after the first second or two, this new product differentiates itself. First of all, the tamarind flavor seems to be more pronounced, giving this sauce a subtle sour component to balance the extreme sweetness. There also seems to be a salty, savory flavor which swells as the sauce lingers, yielding a certain richness. Is it anchovies? I cannot detect any of the chocolate or real maple syrup, which the label claims are key ingredients, but that doesn't stop this finishing sauce from having that characteristic Blues Hog sweetness. One final aspect that makes this sauce different is the lingering mild burn left on the palate.

Overall, for me personally, this sauce falls a bit short of the greatness of Blues Hog's existing product line. It is very sililar to the original barbecue sauce, which is a good thing, but the small differences do not strike me as improvements, but rather detriments. To me, the sour and savory elements only distract from what was an already great sauce. But the reality is that Blues Hog's worst sauce is still better than many companies' best.

Grade: B


In a related note, as I'm sure many of you have already heard, Bill Arnold, creator and pitmaster of Blues Hog Barbecue, has recently encountered some health problems. Specifically, doctors discovered a tumor in Bill's brain. In surgery, they were able to remove most but not all of the tumor. Having encountered all of this without insurance, Bill is now left with a large balance of medical bills and looming prescription costs. He is a single father of three young girls, without the means to cover such daunting expenses. If you wish to help, a relief fund has been established at a local bank in Bill's hometown of Perry, Missouri. Please send checks made out to "Arnold Family Fund" to the following address:

Perry State Bank
P.O. Box 378
Perry, MO 63462



Get well soon, Bill, and we hope to see you at a contest really soon!

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Demon Pig BBQ Sauce

With a name like "Demon Pig", one would expect a real flamethrower of a sauce, but to my surprise, this sauce was not spicy at all. The first thing I noticed about this sauce when I poured it was that there are big chunks of stuff in it. Closer inspection revealed the chunks to be onion and bell pepper. I don't necessarily have a problem with chunks. In this case, the onions factor very prominently in the flavor of the sauce, so watch out onion-haters. The other major flavor component is brown sugar sweetness - this sauce is very, very sweet. And while the sweetness and the onion dominate things, there is a nice depth and well-roundedness provided by bit players garlic, vinegar and tomato.

Yeah, the label tells me it has high fructose corn syrup in it. And liquid smoke. So it might not make the cut at Whole Foods. Does that make the Demon Pig a guilty pleasure? Eh, who cares? The bottom line with barbecue sauce, as far as I'm concerned, is "does it taste good?". And the answer in this case is: absolutely.

Grade: A

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that there was a misprint regarding the ingredients on the Demon Pig label. The sauce does NOT in fact contain High Fructose Corn Syrup, but rather the much more benign sorghum. Apparently, future label printings will correct this error. So there you go...tastes great, and all natural taboot.

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Trader Joe's Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce

This week - another Kansas City style sauce, with somewhat better results.

Trader Joe's is coming to Nashville. Those of you who live in larger metropolitan areas are probably saying, "big deal", but we Nashvillians are relatively new to the world of upscale grocery stores. Trader Joe's is the latest in a procession of high-end grocery retailers to Middle Tennessee, following Fresh Market in 2005 and Whole Foods in 2007. Trader Joe's tends to be a little less expensive, and a little more focused on their own store brands. Having had limited exposure to the store over the years, I look forward to seeing what all of the hype is about when their new store opens in Green Hills this fall. In the meantime, I was able to get my hands on a bottle of their "Kansas City style" barbecue sauce.

It's an attractive looking sauce, with deep burgundy color and a glossy shine. It's thick, like a KC-style sauce should be, but still very pourable. The dominant aroma is hickory smoke, and smoke is also a major component of the taste of the sauce. There is definitely a rich molasses sweetness, complemented by hints of onion and garlic, and did I mention...really smokey! Overall, this is quite a tasty sauce, heavy and strong, but not overpowering. Not too bad for a grocery store brand!

Grade: B

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Ribber City Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce

A few weeks ago, we learned that you can't necessarily judge a barbecue sauce by its zip code. That theory will again be put to the test today as we examine a Kansas City style sauce produced by a company in...New Jersey. Ribber City Sauce Company has a line of rubs and barbecue sauces as long as the New Jersey Turnpike. They've got just about all of the major barbecue regions covered - in addition to the Kansas City style sauce, they offer a Memphis style sauce, a Carolina style sauce, a Kentucky style sauce, as well as boutique offerings like a blueberry chipotle barbecue sauce. Each of their products is adorned with a photo of "Old Man Ribber", who I have a feeling is about as real as Aunt Jemima and the Cream of Wheat chef.

The sauce itself does have a lot of the characteristics of a traditional Kansas City style sauce - dark in color and thick in consistency. When uncapped, the sauce effuses an exotic, complex aroma that promises exciting flavors. The taste that follows, however, fails to deliver that excitement. There are traces of the rich and smokey, molasses-sweet flavor that they were surely shooting for, but in the end, that's all there are - traces. The resulting taste is bland, and almost watered-down tasting. Very disappointing.

Grade: C

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Ahrun's Famous Zombie Boogie

Alright, I'm back. Things have been a bit hectic lately. Sorry I've deprived you of learning the relative merits of various barbecue sauces. Anyway, on to business.



One of the fallacies of these barbecue sauce reviews is that they are essentially done in a vacuum, with sauces tasted alone on a spoon. And though that is really the only fair way to judge a sauce, we all know that in reality, barbecue sauce was made to be eaten with barbecue.

So if we think about barbecue sauce in context, just because a sauce is good by itself doesn't necessarily mean it will complement what it's going on. Sometimes a sauce, though delicious, is so overwhelming that it will dominate whatever it touches. Ahrun's Famous Zombie Boogie Pineapple Habanero Bar-B-Que Sauce is one such sauce. Don't get me wrong, I love this sauce. It's the color of a good mole and the consistency of steak sauce. It has a nice smokey aroma. And the best way I can describe its taste is to say that the sweetness and the spiciness have both been turned up to 10. This is about the sweetest sauce I have tasted in these reports, and also the spiciest. And it's an interesting sweetness, with essences of molasses and, of course, pineapple. It really has a great taste. HOWEVAH...

I cannot imagine putting this sauce on any barbecue that I thought was good, simply because there is no way you could taste anything else under this sauce. But on the other hand, the sauce tastes so good that if you were dealing with, say, bad barbecue, this sauce could turn it into something interesting. In fact, Ahrun's Zombie Boogie could be the beginning of a whole new category of barbecue sauce:



Henceforth, any barbecue sauce which is delicious, but too strong for its own good, shall be known as FLUBB.

Grade: A

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: BBQ'n Fools Barbecue Sauce

After talking last week about how regionalized barbecue (and barbecue sauce) is, this week I am going to go an completely contradict myself. But hey, life is like that, right? Rules were made to be broken.

This week's sauce is from a competition team in...Southern California! Just the fact that there are barbecue teams and barbecue events thiving in SoCal is a testament to just how boundary-less the Art and Science of barbecue is becoming in our day and age.

The BBQ'n Fools are two-time California State Grand Champions and the 2000 Southern California Barbecue Association Team of the Year. But their barbecue sauce tastes straight outta the deep south. It's a slick ketchup-based sauce with a nice vinegar-enhanced tanginess. It's got a little bit of brown sugar sweetness, a little bit of smooth bourbon warmth, and a lot of red pepper spice. This sauce has a serious bite for a sauce not labeled "hot". All in all, though it could be a bit overpowering, it's not a bad sauce.

Grade: B

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Cowtown Bar-B-Q Sauce

Barbecue sauce, like so many other things, is prone to geographic tendencies. Generally speaking, barbecue sauce gets darker, thicker, and sweeter as you move from east to west. Eastern Carolina sauces are little more than straight up vinegar and pepper, while Western Carolina adds a little bit of ketchup. By the time you get to Memphis, the sauce is ketchup-based and usually involves some brown sugar. But barbecue sauce reaches its logical extreme in Kansas City, which is defined by sauces that are thick, dark brown, and molasses sweet. Funny thing is, though, that when I visited KC's two most famous barbecue joints last year, each had a sauce that was distinctly different from the KC Stereotype.

This week's sauce is much more like what I would expect a typical Kansas City barbecue sauce to be. Cowtown Bar-B-Q Sauce comes with quite an impressive KC pedigree. It's the product of one of the city's most touted barbecue restaurants of recent years - Oklahoma Joe's. The sauce won "Best Sauce on the Planet" at the 2001 American Royal. That's not some trumped up superlative, Dear Reader - that's a title from one of KCBS's premier events.

It's easy to see how this sauce could win over a judge's taste buds. It has a rich and tangy tomato-based taste with a very smokey accent (maybe a little too smokey in my opinion, but I understand that smoke sells in Kansas City). The sauce's sweetness is understated, and it has a very nice spicy kick that starts mild and swells to a medium burn in the aftertaste. The sauce is rust colored and thick, but still easily pourable.

In a sauce-lover's town, it's easy to see why this one has risen to the top.

Grade: B+

Links:
Cowtown Barbecue Products
Oklahoma Joe's Barbecue

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Blues Hog Barbecue Sauce

By now you might be thinking, "Gee, does BP actually like any barbecue sauce?" Well yes I do, and as a matter of fact, it gives me great pleasure to talk about one of my favorites this week - Blues Hog. I love Blues Hog. Ulika Head Cook Rob Marlow introduced me to the Hog, and after taking a small tupperware container of it home with me, I reported back to Rob that I thought I could eat toenail clippings if I had Blues Hog to go with it.

It's about as thick a barbecue sauce as you will come across, Dear Reader. It's almost the consistency of honey! And it's almost as sweet as honey, too. But if you've tasted your share of barbecue sauces, you know that it's easy to make a sauce really sweet. And it's not much more difficult to make a sauce both really sweet and spicy, which Blues Hog does to perfection, using just the right amount of heat to cut through the candy sweetness. But true greatness requires a certain something extra, and I'm here to say that Blues Hog has it. It's a unique and invigorating blend of spices which make themselves known right away, but flourish as the taste of the sauce continues to develop. After many tastings, I still cannot put my finger on exactly what gives this sauce its exotic twist. The ingredients tell us that tamarind is in the mix. And...anchovies?!! But I have a feeling the answer lies in the ubiquitous ingredient simply known as "spices". Whatever you're doing, Blues Hog, you're doing it right!

Grade: A

I had already written that review, Dear Reader, when we embarked on our epic Clarksville adventure. I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined that we would end up cooking right next to THE CREATOR of Blues Hog - Bill Arnold. As soon as we made the connection of who he was, I started geeking out. I have not been in the barbecue game long enough to have very many heroes, but THE CREATOR of Blues Hog is certainly one of them. I even had my picture made with him (he's the overall'd one).



So at that point, the weekend was already a success. But what made it even better was that Bill, as Rob as has already mentioned, was one of the kindest, most genuine people we have met on the circuit, and it was a real pleasure getting to know him better over the course of the contest. He is truly the "salt of the earth" and I hope this wasn't the last time we run into him. In the meantime, at least I have his killer sauce!

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Maguire's Irish Barbeque Sauce

Did you know that barbecue sauce existed in 1645? Neither did I. Did you know that there was such a thing as "Irish" barbecue sauce? Yeah, me neither. It looks like we'll both learn something today. According to the label on Maguire's Irish Barbeque Sauce:

Adherence to Conor Patrick Maguire's (1645) recipe is as close as possible given today's availability of the original medieval spices.

Wow. And you thought your grandma's recipe carried some tradition!

Well, maybe the availability of those precious medieval spices is not very good in 2008. Or maybe C.P. Maguire's 1645 recipe just isn't all that stellar, because this sauce just does not impress. It's difficult to discern any significant flavors beyond the basic Worcestershire-enhanced tomato paste. The sauce is neither sweet nor spicy, and there is little to no vinegar flavor either. Quite frankly, this is as bland and uninteresting a barbecue sauce as I can remember tasting.

Grade: D

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Melinda's Coffee BBQ Sauce

One more post about Memphis and then I promise I'm done talking about it. For now.

Another really fun place to go in Memphis is the A. Schwab General Store on Beale Street. It's a gigantic three story collection of some of the oddest, most random things you can imagine. They sell everything from overalls to old movies to incense to kitchenware. Even if you don't want to buy anything, you can spend an hour or more just browsing through all of the odds and ends for sale.

Another thing that Schwab has quite a large selection of is hot sauces. And while I don't have the heat tolerance to be a legitimate connoisseur of hot sauces, I did come across a rather unusual barbecue sauce. It's from the Melinda's line of products, which mostly consists of a variety of hot sauces, and is produced by Figurosa Brothers, Inc of Dallas. What we have here is a "Coffee BBQ Sauce." I paid $9.00 for a 14 ounce bottle, which is completely outrageous even by Beale Street standards. You can do slightly better ordering it from the Figurosa website at $6.25 per bottle, but even that is well above the industry average.

"Is it worth it?" you ask. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Containing both Melinda's Chipotle Sauce and Melinda's XXX Hot Sauce as ingredients, the sauce does pack quite a peppery punch. But beyond the heat, all of the flavors are disappointingly bland. The tomato paste base is enhanced by an onion-heavy mirepoix - a combination that could be the foundation of something really good. But unfortunately, subsequent ingredients fall flat in their attempt to complement, and the result is a bland, vaguely fruity finish. Oddly, one thing that I cannot taste in this sauce is coffee. A slight coffee aroma is definitely present in the smell of the sauce, but not in the taste.

Grade: C

BBQ SAUCE OF THE WEEK: Rendezvous Famous Barbecue Sauce

As I mentioned in the last post, I recently made a trip to Charlie Vergo's Rendezvous in Memphis. And while I stand by my opinion that their ribs are overrated, I found myself interested in their barbecue sauce. At $3.50 for an 18-ounce bottle, it was not as expensive I would have expected, given the place's tourist trap status.

The sauce is not very thick - roughly the viscosity of a vinaigrette dressing - lightly coating a dipped toothpick. The consistency of the sauce is smooth, with a plentiful amount of particles suspended in it.

It's tomato-based, as most Memphis sauces are, but not as sweet. It leads with a tangy vinegar punch which slowly recedes to reveal earthy tones of tomato and onion, with an essence of mustard. The sauce finishes with a lingering burn and a trace of smoke.

Grade: B