+1 for Stubbs - if you actually require a sauce for your meat.
If done right, extra sauce usually isnt required.
Sweet Baby Rays I liked until I read the ingrediants (High Fructose Corn Syrup top of the list- -like many of the ‘thick’ bbq sauces out there) - Stubbs has none.
Compliment graciously accepted in the spirit of fine sauces and exemplary BBQ joints, but – not a dude. Heh.
My knee-jerk reaction when I read the thread title was “Sriracha”, but I guess that isn’t strictly a barbecue sauce. It’s better than almost anything, though.
You’re talking Famous Dave’s Devil’s Spit, right? I love FD’s – the one by us has the most amazing ribs. Sometimes I get the Spit, but usually I just get the Rich & Sassy.
I had basically given up on store-bought barbeque sauces until I tried Sweet Baby Ray’s. Hard to say why the others seemed so fundamentally unsatisfying. It seems to have gone downhill.
I noticed a dramatic drop in the quality of Sweet Baby Ray’s a few months ago. I can’t place exactly when I had previously bought the last bottle, but the next bottle I opened was suddenly not fantastic anymore. I have developed a dark suspicion that they replaced some previous ingredient with corn syrup. Now, I’m not from the Huffington Post or anything – I don’t think High Fructose Corn Syrup causes autism. But it’s not an adequate substitute for every kind of sugar any more than carob is a substitute for chocolate.
Unfortunately, I didn’t save the old bottle to confirm my suspicion.
Maybe that was what I experienced as well - becuase I distinctly remember it being better than it was the last time I picked it up (and then discovered the HFCS in it).
My husband and I also like Stubb’s Original, but only the original is worth eating. The honey pecan and mesquite or whatever were completely disgusting.
Sweet Baby Ray’s has had HFCS in it for at least a year, and probably since it was first manufactured for mass market. That was the first thing I looked at when I first tried it a long while back. So does Famous Dave’s, unfortunately. I find that if a sauce or syrup is really thick, sweet and tasty, it probably has HFCS in it.
I haven’t had Stubb’s BBQ sauce in about 10 years or more and I don’t know if they have altered it since they went national but I never really cared for it, it kind of reminded me of thin and sour Heinz 57. They did have some great chow-chow however, looks like they got rid of that since they went “commercial”, however.
Well, that data at least eliminates a blind alley. If it’s always had the corn sugar, then my next guess is that now just has more of it? Such that the other flavors aren’t standing out as well, so it seems more insipid somehow? Unfortunately, data on that will be harder to come by.
How about this: suppose I wanted to make a barbecue sauce that tasted a lot like Sweet Baby Ray’s used to taste. What would I have to mix together?
Got me. 
I haven’t had Sweet Baby Ray’s in a good long while. It’s possible they simply adjusted the mix of ingredients.
Salt Lick BBQ makes great sauces.
For store bought sauce I like to use Stubb’s Mopping Sauce while cooking and their regular sauce when eating it. The mopping sauce makes the meat so tasty I sometimes don’t even use the regular sauce.
…I see I’m not the first to come up with that. And here I am thinking I discovered it in a small local grocery store.
I’m something of a BBQ sauce connoisseur and sometimes the situation calls for Rudoph’s
Surprised to hear you say so, especially since you like Stubb’s – we used to go to the Salt Lick all the time, don’t get me wrong; it’s a great place and their meats are outstanding. But I always thought their sauce seemed like an afterthought. Good, but not great.
Oh man, I am confusing Stubb’s BBQ sauce with Rudy’s Original BBQ Sauce, here… I never much cared for Rudy’s because it just was too vinegary and weak, comparable to Heinz 57, IMHO… don’t believe I have ever tried Stubb’s sauce, but I have had his chow-chow, which was excellent.
Homemade barbecue sauce! You start with any good ketchup - Heinz is just fine - and mix it with wine, vinegar, garlic, onion and some spices. It´s about eight parts ketchup, one part wine, and half that vinegar with the other stuff to taste.
You´ll be amazed at how easy it is - just cook it all together for ten minutes on medium. When it´s ready, put it in the bottle the ketchup came in.
Oh, yes. Back in the mid-90s I picked up a bottle, but the next time I looked, it wasn’t available. More recently it showed up again, but it was a new recipe and wasn’t nearly as good.
Actually, my current favorite is the reviled KC Masterpiece. I tried Sweet Baby Ray’s and it was too sweet.
I’ll try the other recommendations, but I don’t want more than a very slight bit of heat.
Well, for many many years in the restaurant business the favored base was Cattlemen’s BBQ Sauce… for a long time it was never available to the general public, only institutionally. A lot of places would use it as a base or ingredient in their proprietary sauces and hop it up with personal accents.
Maybe you’re confusing the Rudy’s I linked with some other Rudy’s? I have some right here. It’s not vinegary, it sure as heck ain’t weak, and I don’t think it ever went national, exactly (though I guess they have a few restaurants outside of Texas – maybe that’s what you mean?). The only place I know of to get it is straight from Rudy’s. Identifiable by the deliberate spelling of “Sause” on the very plain label. Advertised with pictures of people glugging it straight from the bottle. *That *Rudy’s?
