BBQ Sauce
 

Can anyone recommend a good one that you can buy at most supermarkets? Thanks-

Stubb's
Sweet Baby Ray’s

I have a local favorite, but for one that you can probably buy nationwide, Sweet Baby Ray's is good.

KC Masterpiece is available in stores around here.

Sweet Baby Ray's is fantastic

I don't know where you live, but if you are in or near New York State go for Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. If not, they ship!

If you have a Famous Dave's around you, they have like 6 different kinds you can buy at their restaurants. I'm not sure if they are selling them in stores yet.

Famous Daves.
KC Master Peice.
Gates of Kansas City.


Cheap, actually Kraft is pretty dang good!

If you have a local BBQ place and it is bottled it is probaly over priced!:(

I Love Bob Evans saying it is in the sauce!:p Hell, they do basic Family food!;):eek:

Cattlemen's BBQ Sauce is what my team uses to feed the masses. The website has a printable coupon and a really impressive bragging rights section.

I'll add another Sweet Baby Ray's endorsement. For pure simplicity, It's a winner.

If you're interested in making your own, I've got a TIGHT recipe that sounds strange because Iced Tea is an ingredient, but turns out real nice.

Iced Tea Barbecue Sauce

3/4 cup canned iced tea
3/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons A.1. steak sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine the iced tea, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, liquid smoke, onion and garlic powders, and pepper in a heavy saucepan with 1/4 cup of water and gradually bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Reduce the heat to medium to obtain a gentle simmer. Let the sauce simmer gently until slightly reduced, thick, and richly flavored, 6 to 8 minutes. Taste for seasoning, adding brown sugar or lemon juice as necessary; the sauce should be highly seasoned. If sauce is too thick or intense, thin with a little more water.

Transfer the sauce to a bowl or clean jar and let cool to room temperature before serving. Any leftover sauce (in the unlikely event that you have it) will keep in the refrigerator, covered, for several weeks. Let return to room temperature before serving.

Makes about 2 cups
http://www.bbqu.net/season2/208_4.html#iced_tea_sauce

If you've got a bit more time, making your own sauce is the way to go. Like with most things, you get out what you put in.

One of the gifts I gave my dad for Christmas was a Jim Beam grilling gift set. It has some BBQ sauce that I like to use everytime he grills stuff. It's tasty.

I usually make my own, but this is one VERY good indorsement:


as is that of the Loveless Cafe.

Stubbs is a great one. Yummy!

KC Masterpiece is my favorite! YUM!!

Baby Ray's
Stubbs

If the corn syrup is in the first 6 ingredients, put it back on the shelve.
Hoboken Eddies is real good stuff.
Will have to locate web site for you.

Sticky Fingers...especially the Carolina Sweet!

I'll second that!

second and 3rd for the KC Masterpeice

Also try the Jack Daniels original no. 7 sauce.

I tried a bottle of Budweiser BBQ sauce this weekend...very sweet and tangy.

I also tend to make my own when I have time.

Without arguing that it tastes really good, I find it highly amusing that they would call it "Carolina Sweet," since it nothing like traditional Carolina barbecue sauce.

I know, thank God. Lexington BBQ is severely overrated.

I love it that Sticky Fingers BBQ sauce has made a name in other parts of the country! A couple of boys from my hometown started the company! (Which might explain that Tennessee boys could have a different take on "Carolina" sauce!)

Agree. As a friend of mine once said, it is impossible to get decent barbecue anywhere west of I-95. ;)

Depends on what you're talking.

Mountain, Piedmont, and Costal all vary greatly in what they call BBQ.
Here in the Piedmont, it's very thin and vingary...but most costal places (at least where I've been) are more like the Sticky Fingers.

:eek::eek::eek:

In Eastern North Carolina, barbecue sauce is made from vinegar, with peppers, herbs and other flavorings added -- maybe even a little sugar -- but with no tomato sauce. (Did I emphasize the no enough?)

"Western North Carolina" barbecue sauce is similar, but with tomato sauce added, while traditional South Carolina barbecue sauce tends to favor the addition of mustard rather than tomato sauce. Both are considered anathema in Eastern North Carolina.

And of course, anywhere in North Carolina, barbecue as a noun means slow-cooked pork, often the whole pig, which is slavered heavily and regularly with the vinegar-based or vinegar/tomato based sauce while cooking. Otherwise, "barbecued" is an adjective, like "barbecued ribs" or "barbecued beef."

I'm from IL...I've been taking the word of my 42 year old Charlotte-born co-worker and 60-something SC born boss... I'm pretty sure they knew their BBQs. It a pretty common converstation subject here at work.

Now I'm hungry!
 

My favorite BBQ place is Fresh Air BBQ, Jackson, GA

Here's part of an article from the Washington Post in 2004:

Fired Up Over a Tradition
Looking for Local Barbecue That Satisfies Savory Memories
Thursday, July 22, 2004


Barbecue is my ultimate comfort food.

It's the food I most associate with my parents, who seem to have had barbecue in their genes. Family reunions centered around barbecues: My mother's uncle hosted the annual Harper family gathering and led the crew that stayed up all night to cook a whole pig in a pit.

My father and his brother began frequenting Jackson, Ga.,'s Fresh Air Bar-B-Que not long after it opened in 1929. My uncle Cliff plotted his hunting and fishing trips around visits to Fresh Air, and in his later years a trip to Fresh Air was my ailing daddy's favorite outing. We children gathered there after his funeral.

When I was growing up, barbecue was the special treat on those rare occasions when our family of six didn't eat at home. Now I think it's in my genes.

And to me, real barbecue places should look like Fresh Air: a low-slung, unpainted wooden building, large stacks of wood outside, a sweet/acrid hickory aroma you can smell before you round the last curve, a parking lot that is as much sand as gravel, long communal tables with ladder-back chairs and those yellow-colored pest strips hanging from the ceiling. And, of course, a wooden screen door.

You don't go to Fresh Air for anything but barbecue, served either as a sandwich or a platter, with a paper cup of Brunswick stew and a paper cup of coleslaw, plus some slices of white bread. The pork is slow-cooked over hickory and oak, then pulled and chopped into small chunks that are anointed with a thin and spicy sauce prepared daily on an electric range that must be at least 30 years old.

Of course, it's a pretty common conversation subject. You're in North Carolina. :D

I'll defer to a SC-born boss on SC barbecue, and maybe to a Charlotte-born co-worker on Charlotte barbecue, if there is such a thing (although Charlotteans are notorious for being clueless about the rest of North Carolina).

But I won't defer with regard to Eastern North Carolina barbecue, which I've been eating since I first got teeth -- no tomato sauce in the barbecue sauce. ;)

This article is a pretty good description of NC barbecue, but Bob Garner's book is better.

Memphis>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NC

Get that weak-ass vinegar/mustard based garbage out of here.

Cretin.

I mean, I love Memphis barbecue.

Still . . . cretin.

Whatever, I'm just saying.

Just because a state says, "We're gonna proclaim ourselves the BBQ capital!" doesn't make it so.

Its like if GA suddenly started advertising that they were home of the world's best cajun food. The natural reaction is "what the hell are you talking about?"

Sorry to be so cruel, but NC'ers are absolutely obnoxious about this stuff. Especially considering most of them thought BBQ meant burgers and dogs 5 years ago when they were living in a mid-atlantic state.

Clueless you are about that. The only people who would say that are those who are, um, from away. (Seriously, in all my life I've never heard anyone born and raised in NC use barbecue as a verb or use it to refer to "grilling out.")

And yes, the obnoxiousness runs rampant when it comes to barbecue. I would never deny that -- I revel in it. It's part of the fun, kind of like rooting for a college sports team.

I love Memphis barbecue, I love Kansas City barbecue. I love just about anykind of barbecue. I tend to take the same view of barbecue that Duke Ellington had about music. There are only two kinds: good barbecue and the other kind. You find the good and the bad in all kinds of barbecue.

But for me, as much as I love it all, nothin' beats a good pig pickin'. I'm just saying.

And my initial point still stands -- it's just kind of odd for Sticky Fingers to call that thick, tomatoey stuff "Carolina" anything.

Sticky Fingers certainly isn't Carolina.

My point about grilling out is that there are so many yankees in NC now, and they're often just as obnoxious about BBQ.

Sorry for my denseness.

And I'd have to say more obnoxious -- on so many levels.

MEMPHIS!
 

Now we're talkin' BBQ!

I've tried most of the famous places -- The Rendezvous, Corky's, Germantown Commisary, Pig n Whistle, Tops...

It's difficult to pick a favorite.

HA, better check out Kansas City for BBQ!

You have seen nothing yet!:D

Some of the biggest and major BBQ cook offs period!

People come from all over the world to attend some of them!:)

It drives me completely wild when people ask me to a BBQ and have hamburgers & hot dogs! It's right up there with people who put sugar on grits - blech.

Mystic Cat, excellent post, as per usual!

Definite Co-sign. My people are from KC and none of them play about their food.

Of course, my recommendation 2 u is KC Masterpiece.

Just got home from New York with a dozen bottles of original Dinosaur BBQ sauce, one bottle of the Roasted Garlic Honey sauce and one bottle of the Bar-be-bleu schmearing sauce. Yummy!

Hell Yes!! 4 Bottles in the Cabinet, but Gates is stupendous too!:D