And the best commercial bbq sauce is,,,,

[Panhead John]

Stubbs Sweet Heat and their Spicy……and Head Country are my favorites.

[texastweeter]

It always shocks me the amount of stuff we have in common...not sure if thats a good thing.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Of the ones they looked at, I will grab Sweet Baby Rays and Stubbs. My wife likes Famous Daves, but it's not my thing. My favorite commercial BBQ sauce is Blues Hog original mixed near 50/50 with their Tennessee Red. I haven't tried Max's yet, and need to at some point.

The only sauce I make from scratch is E. NC Vinegar sauce, I don't have the patience or use enough to justify making any of the "traditional" bbq sauces.

[jfmorris]

Their Championship Blend I think it’s called is a premix of the Blies Hog original and Tennessee Red. That’s one that I’ve bought in the gallon jugs…

[Jerod Broussard]

Meathead's is really good. If cooking plenty for others the cheapest stuff on the shelf whereby HFCS is probably the only ingredient. I'm really just light coating ribs these days, sorry, LAYERING FLAVORS.

[DaveD]

One of many reasons we love our Rudy's Sause is no HFCS, it's got lots of normal ingredients like vinegar, tomato paste, and so on. Sugar is number 4 or 5 in the ingredient list if memory serves. Love that stuff!

[WillTravelForFood]

reading the ingredients panel is a fine art.

[Mosca]

Someone ought to try that Great Value sauce. Seriously, it’s only like a buck thirty eight a bottle. I’ll pick one up next time I’m down that way and report back.

Bottled sauces kind of short circuit my brain. I mean, let’s pick ribs. So I bought quality ribs, trimmed them, rubbed them, took my time and set up a good fire, minded them, spritzed them… and now I’m going to put someone else’s idea of what sauce should taste like on them? On the other hand, if they taste good, who cares?

I’ve decided, the heck with it. Sometimes a bottle of sauce just works in that particular time and place, for that cook. Life is too brief to parse degrees of originality. If it tastes good, it works.

[Panhead John]

Good idea Mosca Curious to see what you think.

[Max Good]

https://blackswancompany.com/

[Mosca]

Max, these are all excellent!

[WillTravelForFood]

Sometimes..... we eat our ribs without sauce.

[smokin fool]

So I took the bait and brought this one on our weekly Walmart trip.
Different bottle and labeling, which I attribute to the border and different marketing up here in the sticks.
$3.67 for a 1L bottle here conversely Stubbs and SBR’s are up around $5.00 for a 500ml bottle
Kraft was .87 cents for a 250ml bottle.
Best BBQ sauce ever up here was
Cracked Black Pepper and Cognac by a brand called Irresistables. Sadly haven’t seen it in years.

[STEbbq]

I salute your sacrifice.

[smokin fool]

Bruceski44 If any thing in that bottle is French, I'm a Martian.

[Donw]

The second listed ingredient in this sauce is water. Maybe they use Perrier?

[Jerod Broussard]

smokin fool Discount rack on my sometimes biweekly trip to wolly world

[WayneT]

B. A. In English = food critic or reviewer? Her review Just goes to prove how addicted to sugar and sweetness this country is.

[Mosca]

You spend $250000 on a degree in journalism from University of Virginia, and you pay it back 10¢ a word.

[WayneT]

Uh oh. So we should expect more reviews from her.

[Histrix]

One thing I think some folks are missing is that article wasn't trying to find "the best" commercially available sauce. I'm betting there are just shy of a gazillion sauces out there so such a blind taste test just ain't gonna happen. Their attempt was to find which of the widely available mass market/store brand bbq sauces was preferred.

That the max possible score was 80 and the number one pick scored only a 56 tells us that none of the sauces really impressed the blind taste testers*.

* I have no idea what the college majors of the 8 testers involved in this blind taste test are.

[rickgregory]

Precisely. Aside from the traffic generation aspect of these (Best of... lists are proven ways to get web traffic), these always focus on widely available things that readers can get in their supermarkets. I don't mean HEB, but Safeway and the like - national chains.

[SheilaAnn]

As I go through this thread again… I was raised on Open Pit original. I’m surprised BF did not break up with me years back. (Before I was bbq woke, as it were). Open pit was all I prepared…. Chicken legs with OP charred on the edges. Made me miss my dad all the time.

[Jfrosty27]

I still like Open Pit.

[Livermoron]

Usually I go dry rub...but if I get any sauce, it's Everett and Jones...mainly because the BBQ joints are in Oakland close to my office. Still want to try Black Swan and Meatheads...

[tbob4]

What a moron! Sorry - I laugh every time I see Livermore and moron combined. It ranks as one of the best.

[tbob4]

I remember a few years back when it was difficult to find anyone around here who admitted to using sauce. HA! I like making my own but as I have grown older and older I will buy a store brand and do my own thing to it. I really like Stubbs for that because it seems to be the best for altering.

With that said, when my kids were young we used to frequent a restaurant outside of Stockton called the Waterloo. The kids LOVED their BBQ sauce. I have never been the biggest fan of the sauce. It is dark and sweet. I also don't like to use it for cooking because it burns pretty easily. When I drive through Stockton I often have to travel to Linden (8 miles east) to Rinaldi's market to pick up 6 or more bottles to appease everyone. I mail it to them because they know I get pretty offended when they use the stuff on meat after the fact.

[Livermoron]

When the wife worked in Union City we used to hit up Bosco's in Sunol on our way back home. They had a watermelon based BBQ sauce that was off the charts. If there's ever a sauce I want to recreate, it's that one. Such a unique flavor...