Off-The-Shelf BBQ Sauces

Here are the results of a 40-person blind taste-test of ten off-the-shelf barbecue sauces, most of them available in any supermarket. The sauces were set out in numbered bowls.

Each guest tried each sauce with his or her meat of choice (options were grilled sirloin steak, smoked turkey and chicken thighs, pork ribs, or any of a variety of sausages) and rated the sauces on a one-to-ten scale (yucky to yummy).

All but three sauces received one or more top ratings and all but two were yucky to at least one reviewer. That said, here were the overall results (average scores in parentheses. Higher numbers = yummier ratings).

Best in Show
Texas Best Barbecue Sauce (6.76). Excellent rich color, nice consistency, a perfect hint of sweetness, and a pleasantly spicy after-taste. The clear winner. Don’t mess with Texas!

Also Recommended
Lip Lickin’ BBQ Sauce (5.89). Very sweet, reminiscent of the Chinese hoisin sauce. One drawback: This is a comparatively thin sauce with an annoying tendency to drip off the meat and run down your arm.

Sticky Fingers Carolina Classic Barbecue Sauce (5.51). The only South Carolina-style (mustard-based) sauce in the contest. Some guests were put off by the unexpected mustard flavor but most found it a refreshing change of pace, tart and spicy, not the least bit sweet. Better on sausage and steak than on poultry or ribs.

KC Masterpiece Premium Original Barbecue Sauce (5.41). Generic American BBQ sauce, available everywhere. Guests gave it high marks for the “nice sweet flavor” and “smoky pleasant spiciness.” Said one, “traditional but satisfying.” Hardly a masterpiece but not bad.

Liked by Some
Stubb’s Original BBQ Sauce (5.35). Some found this “tangy and flavorful,” others thought it was “too vinegary,” most judged it “ordinary.” This sauce is not at all sweet, an asset to some reviewers and a debit to others. It contains very little sugar.

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Hickory Grilling Sauce (5.16). A few rated this one “smoky-sweet” with a “hot that comes later,” but several said it “lacks flavor” or was “just OK.” You’d expect more from the makers of America’s best Tennessee sour mash sippin’ whiskey.

Kraft Original Slow-Simmered BBQ Sauce (5.05). Another American generic, the Kraft entry lost points for “weak flavor” and “odd after-taste.” Stick with KC Masterpiece instead.

Don’t Bother
San Francisco Original Firehouse 3-Alarm Bar-B-Cue Sauce (4.70). A few guests appreciated the hot, fiery palate jolt but most complained of a lack of flavor behind the heat. It resembled canned tomato sauce laced with copious amounts of Tabasco.

Emeril’s Sweet Original Bam!-B-Q Barbecue Sauce (4.46). Opinion was sharply divided on the Emeril entry. Some like the sweetness and one lauded the “nice after-taste” but several said it was overly tart and one said, “This tastes dirty.” Like many other celebrity-chef products, this one is also grossly overpriced.

Southern Comfort Classic Barbecue Sauce (4.31). “Weird flavor,” “tastes like ketchup,” “sour after-taste.” No one had a good word for this one.

Got a favorite sauce not on this list? Add it here!

Tasting Tips

A trip down the sauce aisle will reveal that there are literally hundreds of BBQ sauces (and related products such as marinades, hot sauces, meat rubs, dipping sauces, etc.) on the market. Taste-tasting the whole batch of them and compiling and reporting the results would be a life’s work. Two helpful generalizations surfaced in our blind taste-testing experiment:

Designer brands did not routinely out-perform the more generic sauces. And likewise, the pricier brands were not generally preferred over the bargain brands. So don’t reach automatically for the high-priced name-chef bottle when you might find you’d prefer the KC Masterpiece option--at half the price.

Read the Label
If you don’t like sweet sauces, don’t buy one that has sugar or fructose or corn syrup listed as a first or second ingredient. If you don’t want a mustardy taste, avoid any sauce with mustard on the label. Seems obvious, but it’s surprising how many people don’t check.

When all else fails, you can always make your own sauce .

See also:

• Injectors
• Marinades
• Sauce recipes
• Sauce-of-the-month club