Recommend a barbecue sauce
I have to cook for my weekly get-together and time is short. I've decided on grilled barbecue chicken and while I'd normally try to make my own sauce I need to trim some prep time so I'm planning to buy a sauce to marinade the chicken in and baste it with during the grilling. Can anyone recommend a barbecue sauce that would be good with chicken and reasonably likely to be available at the average grocery store?
Wii Code:
0431-6094-6446-7088
0
Posts
For marinade you want salt, acid and aromatics. So a weak vinegar (like ricewine vinegar), maybe some mirin, soy or ponzu, garlic minced, green onion (scallion) slice thin, ginger, and sliced chillies for marinade (I like Asian marinades, but you could use coke/dr pepper for a slightly acidic solution that isn't a vinegar). Your marinade should be thin, but full of aromatics. For chicken do not marinade in acidic solution too long (an hour or 2 for boneless breast, a bit more for dark meat) as that'll start cooking the chicken.
Mop with your store bought once it's mostly cooked to prevent too much char. I always make my own, but Stubbs is pretty good in a pinch.
It's available in stores.
Generally I think BBQ sauce is there to cover for poorly cooked BBQ (chicken somewhat excepted given there's not much taste to chicken and it cooks pretty fast) and if you're going to roll your own keep it thin like a thick jus as opposed to a ketchup affair, but stubbs isn't bad for what it is, which is largely a ketchup and mustard base with adulterants.
Buy a sauce that sounds good. I like Sweet Baby Ray's for something that tastes like a solid BBQ but is also cheap. Take your chicken, stab it with a fork in a couple spots so the juice gets inside, and then adulterate the BBQ sauce with vinegar. White will do, cider is better. Maybe add some extra things you like, maybe some ground pepper for example. Marinade in the wetter, less thick BBQ that you've adulterated!
Then when you're grilling, you use the BBQ sauce straight from the container as a finisher.
I do this all the time with sauces and other things that can be annoying to whip up in a pinch. I will use a pre-existing thing that's close, and then just modify it to work for the situation.
0431-6094-6446-7088
Probably the best BBQ sauce ever made
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Also, anything from these guys has treated me quite well: http://www.dennymikes.com/
Lastly, a real quick, and delicious, marinade: Soy sauce, honey, ginger. I don't tend to measure things, other than by eye, but enough soy to turn the honey into a liquid is 'enough.'
It should be noted that I am not a barbecue expert even a little bit, I just really, really like the Memphis sauce.
Yup, wegmans makes killer marinades and BBQ sauces. McCormick also makes good ones.
If you love sweet sauce, I'd recommend it. If you dislike sweet sauces, avoid.
Also you might want to avoid it anyway, because it's basically just a bunch of brown sugar. But... YUM!
Similarly marinades are usually easy to make with stuff you got, like a vinaigrette with more aromatics and heat. Mainly a thin acid base (vinegar or a soft drink or beer or wine), sodium source, heat (cayenne or fresh chillies), and a lots of aromatics (fresh herbs, onion/scallion/garlic/shallot, minced or crushed to increase surface area, citrus rind).
Score.
I'm a fan of the central Texas regional style, I guess. Non-sweet, vinegary sauce (like Stubbs) is what I dig.
allrecipes.com is a great place to check out.
GIS is evil
By far the best option in stores.
It's awesome when smoking pork shoulder for pulled pork sandwiches.
A basic one is vinegar, salt, pepper corns, red chillie flake, and aromatics. Very thin and acidic. Tart. Really offsets a slow cooked fatty pork shoulder. Although I'm a Texan I learned this from Carolinians (we know cow, but those guys know pig). You could also do BBQ sauce as well, but try it with just a finishing sauce too.
http://www.austinsown.com/buy_online/
Hell, the Rudy's chain of stores will ship you a whole cooked brisket packed in dry ice for you to heat and eat (priced kind of like a Smithfield ham though).
edit: International!
This
The Apocalypse Has Never Been More Fun
Secret Satan Wishlist!! Thinkgeek Wish List
Any of these work. Pick the one seeming less complicated or more complicated if you want. If not I like jack daniels bbq sauce.
Mustard-based bbq sauces are unfathomably vile no matter what, though.
Generally assume barbecue to be delicious unless proven otherwise.
So Cook's Magazine rated Taco Bell's Refried Beans as the best canned beans. Surprisingly national brands are actually sometimes good.