Bull's Eye BBQ sauce rated best

I believe they were trying it against the other mass market sauces that may be promoted for $0.79/bottle.

Folks in Texas think it is probably the preferred local supermarket brand.

Just tweek it to suit your taste.

Up in your area,you will probably find a good quantity of folks that use Sweet Baby Ray's and tweek it.

It is out of Chicago and widely distributed.

Let us know how the Bullseye works for you.

Just to follow up, I did finally try Bull's Eye Original BBQ sauce, and I guess I find it too sweet for my tastes. I prefer spicier sauces.

A little vinegar and some cayenne and it still isn't too bad.

Just a thought.

Yeah, I was thinking that if I buy it again, adding a little cayenne pepper powder would help balance out the sweetness. I didn't think about adding vinegar.

Studly - It will be worth your time to taste the Sweet Baby Ray's brand. We found it at Menards (of all places) and get lots of comments on how good it is for an inexpensive, off the shelf sauce. The wife & kids like the honey variety, but I like the hot and spicy. About $5-6 to taste all 3 bottles.

AND you get to wander around a huge hardware store until you find it. Is this a GREAT country or what?

bob

Yeah, I'll have to give it a try ... didn't know Menards had it. The "sweet" in the name kind of made me think it would be a sweeter sauce, and I like spicy ones better, but I didn't know they had a hot and spicy variety. Thanks for the tip ... both you and Tom mentioned that brand.

Studley, it's sweet alright. It's kind of like putting pancake syrup on your ribs. But then we don't reallly care the thick, syrupy-sweet sauces. Same as Tom, I like to dilute it with sometning else. I use a non sweet Q sauce manufactured locally and dilute the Baby Ray's at least 50-50. Sometimes even dilute it more depending what I plan to put it on.

Try mixing it with Jalapeno jelly. I do this with KC Masterpiece to use as a finishing glaze on the Weber after smoking. Start out about 3 to 1 and adjust to taste.

1 bottle sweet baby rays hot and spicy, 1/4 C.mr. stubbs beef marinade (spicy warm) 1 1/2 T. minced onion,1 T. minced garlic. the family loves it. apply well before meat is done and it will cook down and glaze.

The Sweet is part of Ray's nickname, not a descriptor. Another pretty similar one from Minneapolis is Ken Davis's. KD might have a bit more tomatoey flavor.

SBR must be making a big marketing push - there was a $1 off coupon in our Sunday newspaper; makes it pretty cheap, especially during double-dollar coupon week.

I'm a bit surprised noone's taken a whack at Cook's Illustrated yet. True, they're sort of like a Consumer Reports. But, CR stays pretty close to objective measurements. CI seems to be fairly objective in evaluating equipment. When when they off into the subjective, their tastes may be way way different from yours or mine.

studly,
give these two books a look at they might help
1- barbecue bible sauces rubs and marinades by steven raichlen ISBN 0-7611-1979-5 www.workman.com publishers
2-paul kirk's championship barbecue by paul kirk ISBN 1-55832-242-6 www.harvardcommonpress.com
these books helped us and you can get them at barnes and nobles.
hope this helpped
have fun experimenting
jack
2 Greyhounds....SMOKIN!!!!

I get Cattlemen's Classic sauce from a friend who has a restaurant. You can't buy it retail. It is totally different from Cattlemen's Original. I find it quite good. Not too sweet with a little tang. Not hot but just a little bite. If you like it pretty spicy, a friend of mine swears by Open Pit.

For one of those inexpensive priced sauces you ought to try Sadler's (you can get it at the Wally Worlds). Its not real sweet and not real hot and it is very tomatoey and I like it for basting ribs in a pinch. Its really pretty good in my opinion!

Regards,
PrestonD

Something's not right somewhere along the line here.

The top rated bbq sauce on the Cook's Illustrated TV show was "Mad Dog", NOT "Bull's Eye". Maybe they ran another test subsequent to what they tested and said here:

"We limited the tasting to tomato-based sauces because they are far and away the most popular and represent what most Americans picture when they think "barbecue sauce."

In general, tasters were not overly impressed with these bottled sauces. Most were much too sweet and had an overly thick, gummy texture. The ingredients responsible were high-fructose corn syrup and food starch.

Our favorite sauce is Mad Dog, a boutique brand from Boston. Although the ingredient list is mercifully short (many other sauces have long lists of hard-to-pronounce ingredients), tasters thought this sauce was more complex and balanced than the rest of the pack. It also contained less sugar than most brands and no corn syrup, an ingredient found in all but three of the sauces tested. Bull's Eye, Sweet Baby Ray's, and Muir Glen received decent scores and mixed comments."
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I went out and bought a bottle of Mad Dog Original. It's by far the hottest bbq sauce I've ever tried. Not only did it overpower any taste of the meat, I have always had to have H2O nearby, after trying the stuff.

Perhaps I'm using the sauce incorrectly? I have it at the table as an accompaniement to the smoked ribs. I've tried it heated and at room temperature. Maybe the stuff loses its bite if its used as a mop or something.

Tomato paste is listed as the first ingredient, so that is a plus. "Spices" is listed way down on that list, and there's no warning on the bottle that the sauce is hot. (I want to say here that I like hot, spicy food: for example I ain't that scared of jalapenos with my brisket.) This rib sauce is over the top. How a bunch of folks from Vermont could pick this kid as number one - "complex and balanced" - is beyond my comprehension. Assuming they tasted the same thing I did, there's no way this sauce is "balanced".

I like the TV show, and except for this bbq sauce recommendation, I have found their reviews and recommendations very helpful. As I said earlier, something not right somewhere with this.

Studly,
I think I have what you may be looking for. It's called "Struttin Sauce". Very little sugar in it, and it has a nice bite to it.

However, and I know you're not gonna like this, you have to make it yourself. A small price to pay for a great tasting bbq sauce.

I've made several batches of it, and everyone loved it.

Let me know if you want the recipe. Not difficult to make and worth the effort.

SmoKen,

Go ahead an post the sauce over in the recipes, someone's always lookin' for sauce.

Smokin'

Studly, if you or any of your friends have the book "Smoke and Spice" the Struttin' Sauce recipe is in there. Actually, that's a pretty good book to own. Lots of good ideas in there.

Thanks for all the additional tips, everyone. Yes, I've heard of Smoke and Spice -- many people highly recommend it -- and will have to check it out at the library or buy a copy. Maybe I'll have to buckle down and make my own sauce, like the one in that book. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I make a big batch that will last a while.

You mentioned that Struttin Sauce doesn't have much sugar in it. What are the main ingredients?

Regarding Mad Dog: Back when I owned a hot sauce business -- about 10 years ago --- it was a very highly rated sauce. Notice I said HOT SAUCE business. Mad Dog was far and away THE HOTTEST BBQ sauce I carried.

I liked it but didn't love it. Much better as a dipping sauce that you could control how much sauce you put on.

And I like HOT! Habaneros, Datils, Tabasco.... you name it and I eat it. But I don';t want something that hot slathered all over my chicken.

As an update to my first posting, after looking for a store-bought sauce that has tomatoes rather than "high-fructose corn syrup (sugar)" as its main ingredient, I've tried Ken Davis Bold & Spicy (a regional sauce popular in Minneapolis) and Bull's Eye Original, and both were too sweet for me.

Virtually all the sauces in major grocery stores list high fructose corn syrup as the first main ingredient and I wanted to try some other sauces, so I tried a new approach: Instead of looking for tomatoes as the first listed ingredient, I looked at the calorie count of each, figuring the higher the calories, the more sugars and sweeteners are in it and the less I'll like it, since I prefer spicier sauces. Most sauces ranged from 30 to 75 calories per 2 TBSPs of sauce.

Anyway, one of the lower calorie sauces was Famous Dave's Texas Pit sauce, which I remember liking when I visited Famous Dave's a while back. Anyway, after buying and trying that, to me it is by far a spicier, better sauce than Bullseye and Ken Davis sauces. However, it does list HFCS as its first ingredient ... I guess you can't win 'em all.

Anyway, for those of you who like spicier sauces, try FD's Texas Pit.

Meantime, I just got a call that the "Smoke and Spice" book I ordered is in, so I have to pick that up and try the Struttin' Sauce that a couple of people have mentioned above. (Many of the other store-bought sauces that people mentioned above are not available at my local grocery stores.)

For more sauce resources, check www.nbbqa.org's "Awards of Excellence" listings. This is something the NBBQA does every year, and I think it's a great way to try some new things.

Donna

Studly, while you're exploring, you might try the Cookshack store. They sell a BBQ sauce "kit." A powder. You mix it with other goodies, and slather away.