Since most people will be enjoying a barbecue weekend on this beautiful summer day and then enjoying the fireworks in the evening on this 4th of July day, most people are going to use BBQ sauce today. I've tried many BBQ sauce as a easy and fast way to add flavor when I don't do a nice flavorful dry rub. Or if I ended up leaving the meats to cook too long and the meat is a little dry, I can always "cheat" and add some BBQ sauce.
The best BBQ sauce is always the secret sauce that is a guarded secret at BBQ restaurants or the neighborhood's best BBQ chef. So what are you going to do? You're going to do the next best thing and that's to use the BBQ sauce you can readily find at most supermarkets. I can hear BBQ fanatics yelling "blasphemy!"
If you don't recognize the picture above by now, then let me introduce you to Sweet Baby Ray's sauce. It's the best I've found out of all the mass produced BBQ that's found at all the major grocers like Albertson's, Ralphs, Vons...etc. It's this same reason of mediocre BBQ sauce that I tried to make my meats excellent without having to use BBQ sauce from a bottle.
The only reason I grabbed Sweet Baby Ray's sauce many years ago was because it was on sale. I was going to use it as a base and add my own ingredients to make it better. After I was done cooking, I was just too hungry to bother adding anything to Ray's sauce and just poured it straight from the bottle. I was pleasantly surprised and extremely satisfied! I tried it again the next day on microwave re-heated ribs and it was still good. Damn, this stuff out of the bottle is excellent and I didn't have to add anything to make it better! I'm sold!
- Sweet Baby Ray's Original
- Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey
- Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory & Brown Sugar
- Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet ’n Spicy
- Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle
- Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet Vidalia Onion
From Sweet Baby Ray's website:
Who is Sweet Baby Ray?
It all began back in 1985 when a local Chicago boy named Chef Larry perfected his family’s recipe for a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce and entered it into the country’s largest rib cook-off, the Mike Royko Rib-off. Chef Larry called his sauce Sweet Baby Ray’s after his little brother David, who got the nickname shootin’ hoops on the west side of Chicago. On the day of the rib-off, Sweet Baby Ray’s beat nearly 700 entrants to come in second - an amazing feat for an unknown. The rest, as they say, is history.
When brother David and friend Mike caught wind of Sweet Baby Ray’s success, they, along with Chef Larry, decided to take the sauce on the road. What would the rest of America think?
Knocking on doors, selling to small mom-and pops, even grilling right on the sidewalk, word of Sweet Baby Ray’s savory taste spread like wildfire. By 1994, Sweet Baby Ray’s distinctive bottle could be found on grill pits and dinner tables across the Midwest. With their sights now set on the rest of the US, Larry, David and Mike took to the streets again. From 1996 through 1999 sales soared. Sweet Baby Ray’s also became the BBQ Guru to the taste of Chicago (that’s 4 million visitors and a ton of napkins). By the end of the century Sweet Baby Ray’s US sales had topped 500,000 cases annually.
Sweet Baby Ray’s has become the fastest growing BBQ sauce in America and the #1 premium BBQ sauce in grocery. Tomorrow, maybe the universe.
Sweet Baby Ray's website
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