Speaking of commercial sauces...


 
J

JayHeyl

TVWBB Pro
Last year Costco started selling Sweet Baby Ray's at what looked to me like a special purchase closeout price. It came to about $2.50 for a large bottle. So, of course, I had to buy several, figuring at worst I'd give them away. I generally make my own sauce so it took me a while to try the SBR.

For those of you who are familiar with SBR, is it just me or just this batch or is there a distinct taste of library paste to this sauce? I'm not by any means suggesting my homemade sauce is spectacular, but I thought this SBR tasted truly horrible. How could this stuff ever have become a national brand?

Last summer I smoked ribs for the whole family and made my own sauce. Just for the heck of it I also put out a bottle of SBR. (This was before I'd tried it.) I was kind of insulted when one family member ignored the homemade and went for SBR. Now that I've actually tasted the stuff, I'm well and truly insulted he would have preferred that cr..., er, junk, to mine.
 
I'll have to taste some library paste to make a comparison.;) It is a beloved sauce. I don't care much for it either, but mainly because I think it's too sweet. It's been a while since I've had it.
 
I've tried it and used it now and then. There are better commercial sauces out there and they seem to be getting a lot better. But my go to sauce is #5 which I make a lot of, I only use commercial if it's mixed into something else.
 
I avoid most bottle sauces, but many can be "doctored" to make a pretty good end-product. I made the Piedmont Sauce with SBR and a bunch of vinegar a few weeks back. It was very tasty!

I generally buy Stubbs...no HFCS and generally less sugar than other sauces. If I want sweeter, just add sugar/honey.
 
Every time I buy a bottled sauce, I'm disappointed. When we've had guests over and put out multiple sauces, the No. 5 sauce wins, hands down, over the store bought stuff. No matter how high the quality I think I'm buying, it always tastes less than that. So I pretty much save the bottled stuff for when I'm making Piedmont Sauce. As Mike said, it's pretty good.
 
Sweet Baby Ray's sauce has high fructose corn syrup in it the last time I read the label. Sticky Fingers, my favorite OTC sauce, does not.
 
My main problem with most of them is the added smoke flavor. I want the smoke I worked so hard to put on the meat to shine, but I use sauce pretty sparingly anyway.
 
There are some really good sauces that are available commercially, although not everyone stocks them. They are mostly stocked by the major BBQ stores.

Ones such as...

Swamp Boys Original
Blues Hog Original
Blues Hog Tennessee Red
Loot N' Booty Southwest Sweet Heat
 
The dominant local food chain, H-E-B, carries the licensed sauces from Mueller, Black's, Franklin and several other TX joints. All are pretty good and none are those gooey library paste styles. And none have that cloying over-smoked taste. Franklin's Espresso Sauce is a standout.

Jeff
 
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