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 Barbecue Sauce User's Guide
Excerpt from The Great BBQ Sauce Book, by Ardie A. Davis
Here's what you need to get the best and most out of barbecue sauce:
• An open mind. Be open to trying sauces that stretch your concepts of how a barbecue sauce should taste.
• Flexibility. Many barbecue sauces will complement more foods than barbecue meat. Be flexible enough to experiment and try new combinations of food and sauce.
• Proper tools and equipment includes a stainless steel saucepan for stovetop sauce heating, ceramic bowls and ramekins for oven or microwave heating and for sauce/food presentation, wooden spoons fir stirring, ceramic spoons for tasting, disposable plastic squeeze bottles for sauce painting, and a good shower or nearby car wash for cleaning yourself up after a big meal.
Here's what barbecue sauce can do for you:
• Make good barbecue look better
• Make good barbecue taste better
• Enhance the flavor of non barbecue foods or combinations of barbecue and non barbecue foods
Here's what barbecue sauce cannot do for you:
• Convert bad barbecue into good barbecue; if the barbecue is bad, throw it out!
• Erase wrinkles. It can please your palate, but it is not a wonder drug.
• Substitute fake barbecue for real barbecue. The secret to some barbecue may be in the sauce, but if the meat hasn't been cooked with the direct action of fire and smoke, it isn't barbecue.
Now that you know what you need and what sauce can and can't do for you, the following tips will help you maximize your pleasures with the nectar of the pit gods:
1. Pay attention to ingredients. If you are allergic to monosodium glutamate (MSG), for example, you should know that it isn't always listed as MSG (see the glossary). If you are allergic to fish, you should know that most true Worcestershire sauces contains anchovies. Many barbecue sauces contain Worcestershire sauce. If you are limiting your sodium intake, check the nutrition information on the sauce label. There is an extreme variance in different barbecue sauce brands' sodium content.
2. Don't burn your sauce. A common misuse of barbecue sauce is to put it on meat too early in the cooking process. You can use a vinegar based sauce throughout the cooking process, but if the base of additional ingredients include tomato, corn syrup, or other sweeteners, the sauce can caramelize and burn on the meat. As a rule of thumb, brush sauce on the meat during the last fifteen to twenty minutes of cooking.
3. A little bit of sauce goes a long way. Moderation, as Pythagoras taught us, is good. When cooks serve me barbecue that is drowned is sauce, I wonder what they are trying to cover up. Too much sauce will overpower the flavor of the meat. The sauce should complement the meat's flavor. Put a container of sauce on the table, for guests to add more if they wish.
4. Serve sauce warm or at room temperature. Plan ahead if you're going to serve a sauce that you have stored in the refrigerator. Gently warm it before serving, or at least let it sit out long enough to reach room temperature.
5. Be creative. Put sauce in a plastic squeeze bottle and "paint" it on the serving plate and on the meat with squiggles or lines or other patterns. You'll get the best results with smooth sauces; chunky sauces may clog the nipple of the squeeze bottle. Besides creative presentations, try new and unusual uses for barbecue sauces in recipes. See the recipe for barbecue spaghetti, pig cigars, or Carolina paella in this book, for example.
Now you're ready to begin the adventure. Sit up straight, fasten your sauce belt, and prepare to have fun.
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