Last Minute Barbecue Sauce Recipe

Lets say youre in one of Americas many barbecue deserts and a benign providence presents you with an opportunity to eat some by gosh barbecue. The catches, you must provide some barbecue sauce. You rush to the store and see KC Masterpiece and Bone Sucking Sauce and other crimes against humanity, but nothing youd ever eat without a gun at your head, or maybe even then. What do you do?

Funny you should ask.

I had a call recently from my good friends Lisa and Frank McAuliffe. Actually, Nancy took the call because I was in North Carolina eating barbecue. Anyway, Frank and Lisa needed a recommendation for a good barbecue sauce, and there wasnt time to mail order some Ollies from Birmingham. You should keep some in stock, as I try to do.

Lisa and Frank needed it right away, so Nancy called me.

This was a serious request. Barbecue sauce is serious, and Frank and Lisa are serious food people. They study recipes, follow local restaurant news sedulously, and shop for fresh food daily. Lisa gave us that great salmon marinade that we use (did I post that recipe? Ah! Here is is.), and son Brennan developed the famous Curbed Hunger cheese steak, the sort of sandwich that cheese steaks dream of becoming when they are little cheese steak sliders, and that they think of wistfully as they plod through a brief existence as the DMV employees of the sandwich world, able to accomplish nothing more than spreading dyspepsia. I couldnt slough them off with any of the products readily available here in the DC area, and my stock of Ollies was running dangerously low. Neighborliness has its limits, and Im a great believer in the adage, Give a man a fish and hell eat for day, but teach a man to fish and hell sit in a boat and drink beer all day. Or something.

Thus under the gun, I was, however, able to improvise a recipe for a very good barbecue sauce that anyone can make quickly. Here it is:

One part any commercial barbecue sauce (the less sugar the better).

Three parts vinegar.

One part Texas Pete.

Mix well.

Now that was easy, wasnt it? And its ready to go. If you want it more vinegar-forward, use Crystal hot sauce instead of Texas Pete (which has more salt, less vinegar). If you want it hotter, add one or more dashes of cayenne pepper. Save your Tabasco sauce for eggs, fried potatoes, and cajun dishes.

Lisa and Frank were very pleased with the result. They said that they were going to steal the recipe and start bottling the sauce. You can try this at home if youre in extremis, or you can plan ahead and order some Ollies barbecue sauce or put it on your Christmas gift list. I dont know if you can mail order barbecue sauce from the excellentDixie Pig, but its a great vinegar and pepper sauce. Another very good sauce is available on site at Morris Barbecue in Hookerton, North Carolina. Its only open on Saturday, but if youre nearby, its worth swinging by for the sauce. (Id go to wood-fired places for the meat:Bumsup in Ayden, andGradys,over near Dudley, are closest. Both serve superb barbecue.)

Let me know of other sauces I should try.

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