Back in ‘03 I opened up my own bbq joint near Tampa FL, called Hog Wild Bar-B-Q. I began with my signature “thin” sauce - the product of 20 years of reverse-engineering the old Goode Company sauce from memory. I loved it and thought all my customers would too. But after a couple weeks I was hearing complaints and was told by my employees that I needed to thicken up the sauce. I did. I caved. Around here people are hugely influenced by marketing. Chain restaurants flourish while great mom & pop places whither and die. If you run a restaurant and try to depart from the norm, you’ll likely perish.

And I understand your point about the restaurant dressing the meat for the customer. I did at Hog Wild. I offered only 2 sauces: regular and hot, and I applied it in the kitchen rather than provide a squeeze bottle for the customers. (I had some sanitary concerns too). I rarely, if ever, go to one of those build-it-yourself eateries. I am more interested to taste the meal the way the chef has decided it should be prepared. Same for BBQ. If they dress it with light vinegar sauce, then that is the way I want it. If they slather thick tomatoey sauce on it, then that is the way I want it. Once in Chicago I went to a very upscale, well know steak house. I was told that I could pick out my own steak from the meat counter and then, if I wanted, take it over to a grill in the middle of the dining room and grill it myself! Although my dinner companions did just that, I told the waiter that I trusted this high-end Chicago steak house had nothing but good cuts of meat, and that the cooks in the back were far better at preparing a steak than I. Later I told my companions that they had to bus the table and wash the dishes too!

Happy ‘Qing

I have a Traeger and Q’ed a pork shoulder over the weekend. Used a nice rub followed by putting on mustard as a marinate overnite. I think I read where you don’t like mustard. I couldn’t decipher whether it was used as a marinate or used as a dipping sauce. I would agree it would be terrible as a dipper.

As I was cooking the pork I sprayed it, not mopped with a combo of orange juice and vinegar….turned out nice.

Best to you!

I was raised on Texas BBQ, and there are wonderful, wonderful places, with wonderful brisket and beans, and then I moved to South Carolina, where, I agree with Jesse, that mustard sauce should be outlawed. However, the people here lurve their BBQ, and think I have lost my mind when I say that brisket and sausage are BBQ. (They also think macaroni and cheese is a vegetable here.)

The worst part of it, though, is that Maurice Bessinger makes the best mustard-based BBQ I have had, but Maurice Bessinger also formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People in the 1950s, and sells books and pamphlets in his restaurant with titles like “Why the North Was Wrong” and “The Emancipation Proclaimation was Invalid Because Lincoln was a Communist” so I don’t give my money to him. Oh well.

I personally like a red tomato based sauce that is sweet with a little kick too it. But the stuff in the supermarket doesn’t do it for me, I have never found one that I like, and I have tried most of them. I think most of it tastes like ketchup + A1 + sweeteners (probably HFC’s).