Kay Smith writes:

My daddy and granddaddy were always barbecueing hogs, chickens and beef for all our family, friends and neighbors when I was growing up 50-60 years ago.  Everyone loved the sauces that Daddy and Grandaddy made and I wanted to bring that flavor and taste to everyone now - so I started making the sauces.

And it’s a good story although I thought this sauce missed the mark.   Intended to be blend between a thicker midwestern-style sauce and a thinner, spicier NC sauce.  In the end, I got the simple taste of ketchup and apple cider vinegar mixed with too much water.

Smell 3
Taste 3
Consistency 1
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 2

Ingredients

Ketchup, Water, Apple Cider Vinegar, Molasses, Sugar, Lemon Juice, Salt, Seasoning Salt, Spices, Onion Powder, Ginger, Red Pepper

Website:  www.tarheelpremium.com

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1. Steven Raichlen Best of Barbecue Lemon Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce (2/5)
2. Bone Suckin Sauce (5 of 5)
3. Big Tex Morgan’s Boot Kickin’ Chipotle BBQ Sauce (5/5)

First impressions can be deceiving. A quick glance at this bottle, and you might be inclined to expect a generic taste from a mass marketer of multiple types of foods - all of which probably don’t taste all that good.

But I love it when I’m wrong.

AJ’s use a few, simple components combine to make something truly smooth and deserving of popular recognition.

Ingredients:  Tomato Paste, Vinegar, Mustard, Sugar, Salt, Soya, Garlic, Onions, Guar, Liquid Smoke, Spices.

This is one of those sauces that nails that smoky, mesquite aroma and flavor.  The consistency is just right for backyard grillers - thick and gloppy.  Besides the nondescript bottle, I can’t think of anything for this sauce to improve upon.

Smell 5
Taste 5
Consistency 5
Ingredients 5
Label and marketing 3

AJ’s Fine Foods is a boutique gourmet market serving Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

Website: http://www.ajsfinefoods.com/

Related posts:

1. World Harbors Mesquite BBQ Sauce (2/5)
2. Trader Joe’s Bold and Smoky Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce (5/5)
3. Blue Ribbon Carolina BBQ Sauce (4/5)

McCane has an old recipe but a young company that is just getting the word out.  I ask BBQ vendors to fill out a form when they send me a sauce.  One of the questions is “Why did you start making sauces?”  Here’s how Stewart Sr answers:

This sauce has always been a staple in our house. Originated with my Uncle Jimmy and passed down after his passing. We continued to make his “secret” sauce. It is so different and unique from anything else you can get , that I felt it was time to turn it loose on the world. Just about every Southern family has a “Bubba”and a secret sauce. Slow smoking and BBQing is a southern way of life,when times where simpilier and more family rooted. We need to get back to more of this. Remember when Mamma would holler or ring a bell to tell you that supper was ready or just time to come home. When you taste this sauce , close your eyes and it all comes back to you. You can even see Momma standing on the porch in an apron, smiling waving you in the house. Enjoy, have fun with it !

Sounds great, but let’s look at the taste shall we?

Great smell - like “Peppery Worcestershire.”  And I guess now that I’ve written that, that is the easiest way that I can sum up the flavor of the sauce too - without overlooking the complexity of flavors (lots of spices: onion, garlic, anchovies, tamarind, cloves, chili powder, mustard, tumeric, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin).

I love the flavor, but for my grilling style and what I use BBQ sauce for, this fell a little short.  If you’ve read my posts before, I’m not smoking pulled pork, or BBQ’ing brisket all day.  I’m usually more of a fast-and-quick kind of backyard chef versus a slow-and-low kind of guy.  When used in this fashion, this stuff just kinda drips off the chicken.   But for slower cooking such as pulled pork (in a crock pot even) this pit sauce will make a very fine choice and an excellent dipping sauce.  In the marketing area, I’m thinking this is more a North Carolina style sauce and marketed as such, could set a better expectation of the consistency.

Smell 4
Taste 5
Consistency 3
Ingredients 4
Label and marketing 3

Bottom line: It’s a seriously tasty sauce for serious BBQ people, backyard grillers might be disappointed in the consistency.

Go buy this stuff here: http://www.mccanessouthernfixins.com/

Related posts:

1. Blue Ribbon Carolina BBQ Sauce (4/5)
2. Millers Secret Sauce Original BBQ Sauce (4/5)
3. Grandville’s Gourmet BBQ Sauce - Tropical (5/5)

It’s all about the fire and what happens in it.  And although it took me awhile to realize it for this particular sauce, Nebby had this figured out from the start and remained confident that his sauce would stand up to my criticism.  This is a story of a sauce that at first glance appeared thin and tasted a bit bland but turned out to be a huge winner after the heat of the grill.  What would have happened to Michael Jordan if he simply accepted the fact that his high school coach said he had no talent?  What if Babe, the pig who turned out to be a huge winner, had internalized that others thought of him as the runt of the litter.  What if I accepted the fact that others found it amusing and perhaps silly that I was spending a lot of time reviewing BBQ sauces??    Well, winners push on - and Nebby’s has a winner here.

Aroma - 4 somewhat ketchup-like with undertones of garlic and pepper.
Consistency - 4 a bit on the thin side but holds remarkably well to meat.
Flavor -4  before cooking 3 after cooking 5 an excellent blend of sweet and tangy.
Marketing and Packaging - 5 good looking label, comes with a free basting brush!

Website: Nebby’s Best Barbecue Sauce

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1. Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce (4/5)
2. Emeril’s Sweet Original BAM Barbecue Sauce (3/5)
3. Millers Secret Sauce Original BBQ Sauce (4/5)

I think a lot of companies get the execution of fruit-based BBQ sauces wrong.   The concept of eating barbecue sauce with fruit is a bit odd for some who are used to garden variety (no pun intended) sauces that don’t taste much like typical fruits and vegetables.

I approached this one with skepticism, as the Original Spicy sauce had an overwhelming “eating your veggies” flavor which was a bit much for me.  The taste in this one has a much milder veggie lead flavor, and with the added pineapples, it really evens out the balance of flavors.  As you can see by my rating, I loved this sauce!

Grandville’s nails it with a great smell, flavor, before and after cooking flavor, sticks-to-meat consistency, and great packaging to back it up.  It’s one of the most chunky, most natural sauces that I’ve ever seen in a bottle.

When I grilled up the chicken, it felt like the Caribbean around here - just needed a steel drum or two and some reggae music.  I could also see this going good on top of pork - thinking ham and pineapple is always a nice match.  I’ll have to try that soon.

Smell 5
Taste 5
Consistency 5
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 4

Go buy this stuff here: http://www.grandvillesbbqsauces.com/

If you like pineapple BBQ sauces I also recommend BBQ Stu’s Steel City.

Related posts:

1. Grandville’s Gourmet BBQ Sauce - Original Spicy (3/5)
2. BBQ Stu’s Barbeque Sauce - Original (3/5)
3. Luna Mercato Strawberry BBQ Sauce (4/5)

In a previous BBQ Sauce Review, I’ve tried to advise others  to avoid the Christmas Tree Shoppes when purchasing BBQ sauces.   I should take my own damn advice. I don’t even know why I bother to review this stuff. I guess it shows a nice balance of the good and the really bad.  Not everything can be a 3, 4, or a 5.

I don’t give 1 star reviews often, especially if I know the sender is a one-man operation and I’m going to do real damage to someone’s operation.  At first I thought Country Bob was a small operation until I checked his website.  Then I had no problem slamming em.  I know that goes against the promise of being 100% objective, but I guess I do have a feeling or two and this internet stuff is permanent.  To these small manufacturers, sometimes my comments are more important than the score, UNLESS we are talking about 1 or 5 star reviews.  I stand behind and defend my one and five star reviews like a pit bull holding onto human flesh.

So for this one - I went through the standard routine as I do with each sauce.  I take the smell.  I taste it cold.  Evaluate consistency. Then I cook with it.  Then I evaluate the after cooked flavor.  Then I look at the packaging and see if there’s anything that stands out to me that they might be able to change to be able to enhance sales (after all, my day job is marketing).

But taste is such an important factor it is almost counted 100 times in the weighted score, if you will.  Whether or not the company is tiny or huge, if I feel the sauce tasted so bad it could make you gag, I will provide a 1 star review.

Basically I am saying this stuff tastes so bad, it’s not even worth sticking in your mouth to prove me wrong. Even after shaking it up, the flavors were so uncomplimentary and so dissonant that I couldn’t believe someone actually stuck in a bottle.

No high fructose corn syrup but no good for your BBQ.

Unless you want to!

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1. Borderline Gourmet Chipotle BBQ Sauce & Marinade (1/5)
2. Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce (4/5)
3. Miracle Whip + Chipotle Tabasco = Fish BBQ Heaven

A great tasting sauce. Not too much variation from the mild sauce in terms of flavor, but I noticed something slightly unusual here - usually on a label for spicy BBQ sauces, you can quickly determine what ingredient is making the sauce hot.  Usually it’s some kind of pepper, either in spice, extract, or natural form.

With this specific sauce (Captain Curts Famous Boss Sauce - Hot), the only area I could probably guess the heat came into play is the catch-all ingredient called “spices“.  Its a little frustrating when compound ingredients are used and not broken out into their elements… (my favorite example is a barbecue sauce I tried the other day that listed as it’s first ingredient:  barbecue sauce. Really! More later on that one).  So this sauce is a bit hotter than the mild sauce, but who knows what the heck made it hot.

The ingredients question aside, the flavor of this is great - almost to the level of  “Bone Suckin” uniqueness and distinction.  This one is influenced by something which - to me - tastes like part Old Bay and part traditional BBQ sauce.   Good flavor, negative mark in ingredients for compound ingredients, HFCS, and MSG.  Bonus to Captain Curt for just being awesome.

Smell 4
Taste 4
Consistency 4
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 3

http://www.bbqchicago.com

Related posts:

1. Captain Curt’s Famous Boss Sauce (4/5)
2. BBQ Sauce Give-Away: Bone Suckin Sauce Best Box
3. Bone Suckin Sauce (5 of 5)

Like breaking off a little piece of Hell and mixing it with some vinegar and tomato sauce, this stuff will certainly torture you with heat.  If you believe your mouth should deserve the fire and brimstone treatment, then you might like it.  If you’ve been reading me for a little while, you might know that I’m not a big “let’s see what really hot stuff I can stick in my mouth without it melting” kind of a guy. I tend to enjoy a more sophisticated heat that can sometimes accompany BBQ sauce (more “back of mouth” heat versus total mouth melt if you know what I mean).

This one has some excellent ingredients and fantastic marketing, but the flavor is a little off for me with it’s dominant tomato/molasses/vinegar/honey flavor.  Sometimes in our attempts to produce natural products, a compromise is made on effectiveness or taste.  If you are looking for an all natural sauce, produced without any high fructose corn syrup, MSG, or sugar (this one uses evaporated cane juice) and with a lot of HEAT then this could be a great sauce for you.

Smell 3
Taste 3
Consistency 5
Ingredients 5
Label and marketing 4

Related posts:

1. Fork ‘N Halo Original Sin BBQ Sauce (4/5)
2. Crazy Uncle Jesters Brush Fire BBQ (5/5)
3. Chef Matt’s Arizona Honey Habanero BBQ Sauce (3/5)

Buying BBQ sauce at Christmas Tree Shops is so backwards it’s funny - wrong season, wrong store.  I can safely bet that the bargain shoppers that this store appeals to wouldn’t dare spend more than 2 dollars on a BBQ sauce, and that’s a shame. There’s some really incredible stuff out there, but not available at the Christmas Tree Shops, which is where a well-intentioned friend found me this sauce.  High fructose syrup starts the ingredients off on a bad note (usually it’s tomatoes for this kind of sauce) and while the initial sniff is actually a quite tempting smoky garlic scent, it’s the aftertaste that’s the killer - like a bad piece of meat rotting in your mouth.  Not yummy.

Smell 3
Taste 1
Consistency 4
Ingredients 2
Label and marketing 3

website: http://www.worldharbors.com/Mesquite.html

Related posts:

1. AJ’s Mesquite Barbecue Sauce (5/5)
2. Olde Cape Cod Chipotle (1/5)
3. BBQ’N Fools Signature Barbecue Sauce (3/5)

I will be contacting you to get your mailing address and have David Ashley send you a sampler pack of these fine sauces.

For everyone else, I’m sorry. Please don’t be sad and think “oh i never win contests.”  We will try to get another contest going soon. Hopefully before summer ends!

To be sent an email reminder when another giveaway is happening, please enter your email address here:

http://www.bbqsaucereviews.com/contests/

And I promise not to spam you unless I’m giving you something.

Brian, BBQ Sauce Reviews

Related posts:

1. Russ and Franks BBQ Sauce Giveaway Winners
2. Bone Suckin Sauce Giveaway Winner
3. BBQ Sauce Giveaway: Mad Dog Sampler

I really love sauces that mix the mild with the mysterious, provide the sweet and a special treat, and add  thrill to my grill.  Sorry, I was just watching Captain Curt’s video again, and was caught up in a world of BBQ rhyme.

And if Captain Curt’s sauce represents the Don King of the BBQ sauce industry, then David Ashley’s Mad Dog sauces might be it’s James Taylor, with a fine story to tell and a clean, natural appearance.  If you haven’t tried it, you’re missing out on a critical component of the BBQ sauce world - Mad Dog Sauces.

I reviewed Mad Dog Original back in April (here), and followed that up with Mad Dog Ultra Hot (here) a month later. All natural, high-quality ingredients, excellent stuff …   It seems like every time I turn the page (on the web that is) I see that Mad Dog is winning another award.

Now is your chance to get two bottles for nothin!

Two lucky winners will each receive a two bottle sampler pack of (1) Mad Dog Original and (1) Mad Dog Ultra Hot.

Simple Contest Guidelines

• Comment on this post about anything - maybe say something nice about the sauce or this blog.  Give me some new business ideas or something!  Whatever!  Just a comment will enter you.
• Enter a comment below by Sunday August 23rd.
• Winners will be chosen randomly via the Piper method and announced on Monday August 24th.
• If you are new to this site, please enter your name in the contests mailing list to be notified of contests in the future.

Thanks,

Brian

Related posts:

1. BBQ Sauce Giveaway: Russ and Franks BBQ Sauce
2. Bone Suckin Sauce Giveaway Winner
3. BBQ Sauce Giveaway Winners (5&14)

This is my 3 yr old daughter’s favorite sauce.  I pointed to the 15 sauces on the fridge shelf and asked her which sauce she liked best. She said, “the one with the piggy.”   My response to her was a simple, “you’re so silly.” But the more factual response is that it’s a sauce right on the edge of being a winner (perfect consistency and packaging), but it’s not quite there. The major drawback on this sauce was an ingredient that just didn’t play nice with the others. And since taste is the most heavily weighted factor on these reviews, it pulled the scores down considerably.  I couldn’t place it at first - having never tasted anything like it - but upon inspection of the ingredients I think it’s the rum. Although Jamaican Rum and a picture of a Rastafarian Pig hangin out on a rock is almost what defines Rasta Joe’s, personally I would lose the rum (or put just barely enough to make the ingredients list) and keep the marketing concept. Sorry Joe.

Smell 4
Taste 2
Consistency 5
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 4

website: http://www.rastajoe.com/oursauce.html

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Country Bob is a great guy and a marketing machine - maybe it’s because Christ is his C.E.O. (it says that on the website and all of the marketing materials feature heavy usage of bible passages).  However, if one looks past the biblical references, there’s a lot this company is doing right - distribution at Walmart and giving away free bottles of their All Purpose Sauce to anyone who wants one is a good start if you can afford it. But to me, the sauce is more of a Kraft discount BBQ sauce replacement and not something I would consider to be tasty.  Their All Purpose Sauce might be better and it’s free - so why not give it a try?

Smell 2
Taste 2
Consistency 4
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 5

Related posts:

1. Charley Biggs’ All Naturals Sweet Bourbon Barbeque Grilling and Dipping Sauce (3/5)
2. Chuckster’s Drunken Pepper Spicy Barbeque Sauce (beta)
3. BBQ Stu’s Barbeque Sauce - Original (3/5)

Excellent ingredients, label, taste, smell, consistency.  A great balance of sweet, spice, and tang that won’t burn your mouth off.  The addition of natural hot sauce, habanero powder, cayenne peppers, and oriental hot mustard heat up your mouth to a slow simmer, but don’t take it to the level of scoville novelty like some spicy BBQ sauces.  After grilling the flavor remains strong and some of subtle spices come out. The ingredients stay all natural - using tomato paste and vinegar instead of ketchup and using dark brown sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.    Simple yet elegant website and label.  Clearly, Grumpy is a guy who knows what he is doing.

Smell 5
Taste 5
Consistency 4
Ingredients 5
Label and marketing 4

website: http://www.grumpysbbq.com/index.php

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2. Big Tex Morgan’s Boot Kickin’ Chipotle BBQ Sauce (5/5)
3. Millers Secret Sauce Original BBQ Sauce (4/5)

A great tasting BBQ sauce from a great BBQ joint in Massachusetts (yes that’s where I’m writing from).  This hits the mark with a combination of great taste, smell, and packaging.  I love the tallboy-style glass bottle for BBQ sauces.

I was a little surprised at how thin it was (not the best for backyard grillers) and the fact that they felt the need to put in some artificial coloring.  Regardless this is excellent on a pulled pork sandwich to put on a plate and dip your cornbread into it.  Try it in person - the next time you are near Arlington or Newton MA.

Smell 4
Taste 5
Consistency 4
Ingredients 3
Label and marketing 5

Related posts:

1. South Carolina BBQ Sauce
2. McCane’s Original Pit Sauce (4/5)
3. Sticky Fingers Memphis Original Barbecue Sauce (2/5)