Kevin's BBQ Joints

I’ve been following the articles from Julia Bainbridge (Bon Appetit) for a little while now. Today, (via Yahoo!) they ran another one of her Supermarket Standoffs. This one was where they took a survey of what consumers felt was the best store-bought BBQ sauce.

Amongst hundreds of entries they narrowed it down to three. Here they are:

1. Kraft Original
2. Stubbs Original
3. KC Masterpiece Original

I don’t generally buy sauces from the supermarket these days as I’ve become friends with so many BBQ sauce makers, but would be interested in know what others thought about this list. Send me your feedback.

Julia’s done a number of other standoffs. Check them out here:

Ketchup
Bottled Ranch Dressing
Ice Cream Sandwiches
Lemonade

Follow Julia on twitter here
See more of her work at Bon Appetit here

OK. So there’s a fair amount of hype behind Pork Barrel BBQ. I first saw them on the ABC’s show Shark Tank. Here’s their audition tape and here’s their appearance. I casually followed their journey as they launched their sauces and rubs and started to get more and more traction in the BBQ world. Being curious minded, I decided to order their Pork Barrel BBQ Original Sauce and a jars of their All American Spice Rub.

I was planning on testing out their product over the weekend, when I happened to hear Heath (he and Brett make up the team behind Pork Barrel BBQ) on Greg Rempe’s BBQ Central Radio Show. It was nice because it gave me the opportunity to learn more about where they came from and their future plans (which include opening a restaurant in Washington, DC). More about that later.

I decided to go with baby back ribs. As instructed on their rub label, I brushed these with olive oil and rubbed in the spice rub (which is described as garlic, onion, smoked paprika, ancho chile, and chipotle chile).

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To promote Jason Lee’s new TNT show Memphis Beat the network is giving away Jason Lee’s Brand Complete Stereo Sound Skateboard and Memphis Blues BBQ Sauce.

Check out all the details on how to enter at Small Screen Scoop.

Giveaway ends on July 25, 2010.

Getting anything in the mail is great (other than bills), but when it’s BBQ related, there’s an extra special excitement that comes with it. One Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago I arrived home to find a priority mail box from Desert Smoke BBQ Sauce. I was lucky enough to get receive three bottles of sauce (Sweet & Spicy, Raspberry Chipotle, and Pineapple Habanero) and one spice rub (Southwestern Spice Rub).

I’m always curious how someone comes up with a product, what the germ of an idea was to bring it to market. Here’s a little insight into Tony Morales reason for starting up a BBQ sauce company “For years I complained about what was missing from BBQ sauces and dry rubs, always adding a lil’ bit of this and a lil’ bit of that to make them just rite. I finally decided it was time to stop complaining and start cookin’ and Desert Smoke BBQ was born.”

Sadly I dropped the Sweet & Spicy bottle, but here’s a great shot of what I received (post drop):

Tony continues, “For two years I immersed myself totally in the BBQ world, played with different ingredients and drove my friends and family crazy making them taste my concoctions. Finally, when I felt like each recipe tasted just the way it should, I bottled them up and gave em’ out to anyone who showed interest and would give me their opinion. Desert Smoke BBQ is committed to combining tangy Carolina BBQ Flavors with BIG, BOLD, Southwestern Spices to create the best Dry Rubs and DIPPIN’-MOPPIN’-BBQ Sauces around! Our products are crafted without additives or artificial preservatives using the finest all natural ingredients available.”

So I decided to go with the Pineapple Habanero as a mopping sauce and my test subject was a full chicken, chopped. I also went for the dry rub on the chickens prior to indirect grilling to let the flavors really soak in and add a second layer of taste complexity.

Closer look at the dry rub.

Here they are on the grill:

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Okay. This could have been a tough review. See I met Tom Porter from Big Butz BBQ Sauce through twitter and we seemed to have a lot in common, especially our off kilter way of looking at life. That’s all a good thing as it’s not often you meet a new friend through the internet, but in ordering his sauce to review I could have been walking down a precarious road. Suffice to say his sauce EXCEEDED my expectations.

Since I was impressed, I figured it would be best to learn a little background about how Tom came about making these four sauces from the man himself. “Big Butz BBQ Sauce started out as what some might call a questing hobby for my, now deceased, step-father Neal Erickson. He was one of those guys where if he didn’t like something, he fixed it. Well, the same was true for BBQ Sauce. He really like grilling out with friends and family and thought that BBQ Sauce always brought something extra to food that he liked, the only problem was, none of the ones he tried were exactly right to him, either they were too sweet, or too smokey, or just plain bland. At first he would tinker with adding to sauces that he liked but, found that if he wanted it done right he had to start from scratch.” This made complete sense to me. It was often the case that I’d try a bottled sauce or one that a friend made and it would be close, but not quite what I wanted.
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Just ran across this way back in my cupboard.

Of the three sauces Arthur Bryant’s has, this is my least favorite, but still has really deep and rich flavors. They do sell it by the bottle and in multi-packs at their online store.

Since this was my first introduction real BBQ, Arthur Bryant’s will always have a soft spot in my heart and make me incredibly hungry whenever I think about it.