I talked to Lance the other day and his business is booming. He’s really looking to expand his retailer network. If you have a gift shop, food shop, heck – if you own a bait shop – contact him. These spices are attractively packaged and make good gifts, souvenirs, and should be a mainstay in the outdoorsman’s kitchen.

I gotta tell you – this sauce was an instant hit at my house. I loved it, and my wife went crazy over it. This is a fairly dark, fairly thick sauce. It is very complex, with a bunch of different flavors and notes pinging away at your taste buds, with every bite. Pulled pork was to be the platform for today’s test. As usual, I rubbed my pork butt heavy with a great rub from the guys over at 3 Eyz BBQ the night before, wrapped with cling wrap and left in the fridge. 3 Eyz is a great rub with bold, fresh spices. It makes a great bark and imparts great flavor into the roast.

I use charcoal in my smoker ( a mix of lump and briquettes today) and a couple of mesquite chunks. I put the pork in at kept the smoker perking at about 235 all day, until it hit an internal temperature of 190. I foiled and let rest, and then shredded it. I served with Rufus Teague on the side.

This sauce has a lot of tang, some molasses showing through, and a slight citrusy “zing” lurking in there. As advertised, it does indeed have a “Touch of Heat”. My wife likes her sauce HOT; me, not so much. There was enough to make her happy, but not so much heat to kill a pasty ol Canadian like me.This is one of the best sauces I have tried yet, and I highly recommend it.

According to the site,

“Rufus Teague made some sauce. He put some in a jar and shared it with the boys.They kept on painin’ him ’til he fixed up another batch. Next thing he knew, he’s makin sauce all the time. It’s damn good.”

Specific to this sauce, the site says: “Rufus spiced it up a bit with this one. He always said, “A touch of heat will let you know it’s there”. Trust me, you’ll know the heat is there hangin’ out with all that delicious sweetness. This one’s special.”

One last thing – they have some cool marketing going on. Bottled in a nifty flask, and Rufus Teague looks like a dude with character. Well done, all around.

Anyway, I’ve asked Brian to, each month, send me his “Pick of the Month”. Basically, of all the sauces he has reviewed that month, which one gets “top Pick”?

This month, Brian recommended this great sauce from Trifecta. See the scoring below from Brian:

Aroma: Oniony Garlicy Jalapeno… oh yeah.

Flavor Uncooked: Fantastic Spicy Sweet, a a nice ketchup replacement with jalapeno undertones and garlic

Flavor Cooked: Caramelizes nicely for BBQ chicken, jalapeno cheddar burgers (recommend Au Bon Pain jalapeno cheddar rolls)

Ingredients: No strong negatives, but not gluten free for those with allergic sensitivities.

Marketing/Label: Appearance is very nice, professional. Sauce is well named, double meaning of the Trifecta

Bottom Line: So many great flavors and well selected flavors goes with almost anything and the heat slowly creeps up on you. That’s one of my favorite things about some BBQ sauce and this has it.

Thanks again to Brian for sharing his “best of the best” for another month! He runs some great contests on his site so I suggest you add it to your Favorites!

As for Trifecta, you can find them online here: Trifecta Sauce

Here is the latest:

Update from the Kitchen Hack

It has been several months since dryrubbedrat kindly let me be a guest blogger to announce new changes coming to Hack’s BBQ Sauce. In the time since then, I expected to create a great tasting all natural equivalent to Hack’s which I would introducing now. Instead, the development has been more difficult that I first thought. I don’t know why I figured I could do it quickly. It took 2 years to perfect Hack’s BBQ Sauce! What was I thinking?

While I don’t have a new sauce to introduce yet, the past several months have still been fruitful. I’ve learned alot about different flavors and how they work together and with different types of meat. I’ve gotten some great feedback from family and friends who have suffered through many tastings and discussions. From all this, I think we are definitely heading in the right direction. One of the side benefits of this process has been the reformulation of the original Hack’s BBQ Sauce. We were able to remove a substantial amount of the high fructose corn syrup without affecting the taste. This improved sauce is now being sold on our website and will hit the local stores in a few weeks.

Because customers just love the way Hack’s BBQ Sauce tastes, my original goal was to make the all-natural version taste exactly the same as the original. I see now that this is not a realistic goal. The all-natural sauce will definitely have a different flavor, and that’s OK. But I won’t consider the new sauce ready until it has the same quality of taste as the original. That way, I know my customers will be absolutely delighted when they crack open a bottle for their next barbecue.

I want to thank the folks at Rufus Teague for sending me some of their sauce to try.

I’ll post a full review soon, but I can say this stuff was gooooooood…….

More to follow!

OK, it’s finally here – the Great American BBQ and Beer Festival – this coming weekend in Chandler!

March 24th – Noon until 8 PM

The Great American BBQ and Beer Festival

Come on down to Downtown Chandler’s Great American BBQ & Beer Festival… This event is for the whole family to enjoy. Throw out the lawn chairs and picnic blankets and prepare to witness Chandler’s largest and best BBQ event. Live entertainment, all ages Kid’s Zone, Bike Show with the traditional backyard BBQ atmosphere, this is sure to be a finger licking good time.

Event proceeds to benefit the Downtown Chandler Community Foundation. An estimated attendance of 5,000 plus patrons (local, regional and national) this is a one BBQ you’re not gonna want a miss!

Festival Main Page

Vendor Info

Sponsors

Entertainment

I attended the very first attempt at the Chandler BBQ festival. It was OK, and it is my understanding it has drastically improved! What a great way to spend your Saturday!

I started by thawing the chicken and rubbing heavy on both sides with Sweet Rub from my good friend Obie over at ObieCue. You wanna know anything about “low n slow”, talk to Obie.

I let the rubbed chicken sit all morning in the fridge. After lunch, I fired up the smoker, and got the chicken on the smoker. Got her up to the sweet spot of 225 and went to work on my honey-do list.

The cool thing about Uncle Joe’s BBQ Sauce is that it comes in a bag, as dry ingredients. You add liquid, heat to thicken and “Voila”! Trust me, when you first see that bag of ingredients you think “There’s no way this sauce is gonna be worthwhile”.

For this day, I chose the Honey Mesquite. I mixed the ingredients per the directions and then heated in the microwave to thicken.

This sauce turned out rich, thick and flavorful. It was sweet but had just a touch of heat as well. Seriously, this sauce was excellent and well beyond my expectations. As the chicken neared completion, I opened the vents up wide and stated to baste with my Uncle Joe’s Honey Mesquite sauce.

This chicken turned out great, and the sauce was the star of the show. Honestly, “BBQ Sauce in a Bag” is a bit of an odd concept. You’ll try it becasue it’s quirky – you’ll keep using it because it is a legitimate sauce. Great flavor, great thickness, great color. You can also try their Southwest, Original and Chipotle.

Buy online here: Unce Joe’s Store

I made the chili pretty much per the directions, except it was a bit bigger batch than indicated on the directions. I used an extra can of tomatoes, threw in some kidney beans and other stuff too. Regardless, the chili turned out awesome. I was surprised that there was a little bit of heat in the chili, even with the “mild” seasoning packet. Flavors were fresh and bold. I didn’t add any other seasonings to the pot of chili and really, I didn’t need to. My wife and daughter commented (without prompting) about how good this particular batch of chili was.

From the Old Timer website:

America’s passion for chili can be traced to Texas in the 1820s, when local cooks simmered cubed beef with their special blends of chili peppers, herbs and spices. Today, our chili seasonings make it easy to create your signature version of this family-friendly favorite, whether yours features beef, chicken, turkey or is vegetarian or vegan.

Old Timer Chili seasonings are a blend of varieties of chili peppers and a unique blend of spices. Just add meat, tomatoes and beans if you like. It includes all the seasoning needed to make a bowl of our award winning chili. The chili recipe is printed on the label and is quick and easy with authentic Texas Flavor!

I’d highly recommend this seasoning mix. Stay tuned – I still have the “spicy” version to try! You can order the seasoning online here – it’s part of their February special: Old Timer Special

Anyway, the only item I had left was a lonely lil bottle of Chicago Style Chicken Wing Marinade – I rarely make my own wings, so this little guy got pushed to the back of the shelf. On Superbowl Sunday, I was poking around the kitchen, making some yummies for the family. No party, just us. I had purchased a bag of frozen, store-brand hot wings for the festivities. When I dumped those out onto the baking sheet, they looked weak! As I put them in the oven, it occured to me – Uncle Dougie’s!

Now – a caveat – this isn’t how Uncle Dougie’s recommends this sauce to be used. As the chicken wings were cooking, I basted with Uncle Dougie’s sauce, turned them and basted again. Those wings turned out kick-ass!!

I’m not an intense, burn your face off, chicken wing guy. I usually order them “Medium” when I have a choice. That being said, I’ve been craving something a little different. These wings rock, and this sauce is my new favorite! The wings were hot, but not unbearable. Lots of vinegary base and spices that made for a tangy, flavorful taste journey. Seriously, this sauce is awesome.

Uncle Dougie’s has been making our chicken wing marinade, barbecue sauces, hot sauces, seasoning rubs, bloody mary mix and other products for over 30 years.

How do we define Uncle Dougie’s…..

Un’cle Dougie’s adj. 1. sneaky heat. 2. bouquets of spice. 3. a kaleidoscopic kick

4. multi-dimensional flavor. 5. more sophisticated then mere hotness. 6. makes everything taste great.

By experimenting on close friends & family, and having a large supply of cold libations…a homemade recipe for the best oven baked spicy chicken wings was developing. After years of fine tuning and numerous chicken wing parties, Doug (Uncle Dougie) Tomek was asked (begged) to bottle this fantastic concoction.

Out of the family owned farmhouse kitchen, in a rural suburb of Chicago land…the Tomek Family developed the Uncle Dougie’s line of gourmet food products. Using the very finest ingredients available, a sense of humor and years of cooking experience, they set out to “spice up” everyone’s life a little. As time went on, more and more of the family recipes were bottled. The Uncle Dougie’s gourmet food line grew to 15 products.

Have a look at Uncle Dougie’s Other Products and if you like hot wings in any way, shape or form – order a bottle of their chicken wing marinade. You gotta.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I got lazy for Sunday dinner. I had some stuff to get done around the house and frankly, just wasn’t in the mood to tend the smoker so here is what I did. I took a big boneless pork loin and rolled it really heavy with some Phoenix Competition Rub from local favorite Anthony’s Spices. I then put it into a crock pot dosed liberally with The Hickory barbeque sauce. About 6 hours later I shredded it and put some more RavensBark on. 8 hours later we were eating with more sauce on the side and it was awesome!

From the RavensBark website, ” Get delicious smoky BBQ flavor straight from the bottle! A mild smoky flavor for that just off the pit taste. This mid-western sauce is great with beef pork and poultry.”

The Hickory has a tart/tangy base and lots of big, bold hickory flavor and some vinegar in there too.The Hickory was a great choice for this meal, since I wasn’t actually using the smoker. There’s not really any heat in this sauce, just tangy, smoky goodness. RavensBark sauces are thinner than some – about a 5 on the DRR Thickness scale where 1 is water and 10 is peanut butter! Absolutely recommend The Hickory. All of RavensBark sauces have been a hit in my home, and my wife has declared “The Firehouse” her favorite – not just of the RavensBark products, but of everything I have reviewed to date.