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Food Thread: Is BBQ Sauce The Platonic Ideal Of Condiments?

What doesn't go well with BBQ sauce?

Full disclosure...I tried it last week with tuna tartare, and it was good! Admittedly that is pushing the envelope, but I have had it on pizza, eggs, every sort of red and white meat, and even on salmon (yeah...it's good). Oh...shrimp too!

And I am talking about a classic American BBQ sauce that I make, courtesy of a solid recipe that Shiv-Master-Bluebell sent me a long time ago. There are dozens of distinct styles, so I am sure there is even a great sauce for...shudder...French Toast!

My favorite is a sort of hybrid that I first tasted at the late lamented Flint's Barbecue in Oakland and Berkeley, California. It's a dark sauce without the aggressive sweetness of the KC styles, but the herbs and spices were so well integrated I don't have a damned clue what was in it. The surviving Flintroy family doesn't seem to be making either BBQ or the sauce, so the world is sadly diminished.

Of course with the explosion of BBQ (barbecue?) outside of its traditional regions, there are hundreds of weird sauces...blueberry and kiwi and lizard droppings and all sorts of stuff that I simply ignore at the store. But that is mostly because sauce is easy to make, and it can be tailored for every occasion...even for the occasional Cap'n Crunch and sauce breakfast after a night of perhaps a bit too much bourbon!

I know some of you maniacs make your own sauces, so you know how easy it is! If I make some large chunk of meat I will usually save whatever juices emerge, and it is trivially easy when I Sous Vide! There it is, right in the bag. And from there to a delicious barbecue (BBQ?) sauce is a bottle of ketchup as a base (store brand!), few minutes perusing the spice and herb supply and deciding whether I want it sweet or tart or savory or....

If that's intimidating, just take a look at any solid chef's version, and modify it to your palate. I promise that at the very worst your sauce will be as good as most bottled sauces, and at best you will be amazed at how delicious it tastes, and how easy and inexpensive it is to make.

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I was poking around the sewer that is the internet, looking for some interesting tidbits for you maniacs, and I came across some blog's list of the top 50 food and cooking sites. Ignoring the fact that the award-winning AoSHQ "Food Thread^TM wasn't at the top of the list, I read through it...luckily quite quickly. Nine out of the 50 were either vegan or vegetarian. That suggests that there is a huge market for recipes and food news that caters to people who eat the food my food eats.

I don't believe for a second that a sizable portion of America is vegan, vegetarian, or even vegetarian-curious. I think it is pure hype and virtue-signalling nonsense. They are trying to shove this unhealthy diet down our throats with a combination of bullshit biomedical nonsense and the equally unscientific plea to help save Gaiaia by eating like a poor pre-Columbian hunter-gatherer whose range has no actual protein available, so he scrabbles in the mud for grains and nuts and hopefully non-poisonous grasses.

Yum!

And the anthropomorphizing of food animals is just the lunatic icing on the cake. Yes, we should treat them as well as we can, within the limitations of the obvious priority that we need to feed the world! The life of one child is worth more than a million farm animals, and anyone who denies that is profoundly ignorant, evil, or a combination of the two.

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I have probably blathered about this traditional Scottish seafood soup, but damn...it is deliciously tasty, and simple enough that it can be made by anyone...even me! The challenge is getting some smoked haddock, but anyone with a smoker can make a pretty good facsimile with either haddock or cod.

The first time I had Traditional Scottish Cullen Skink, it was in Edinburgh, on one of the hottest days of the year. And it really hit the spot! The fine Scottish ale I drank along with it seemed to help....

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I'm not sure whether I noticed this recipe because it was a good version of a straightforward dish, or because I was hungry and the photos looked great.

Either way, Beef and Guinness Stew with Wild Mushrooms looks like a good, solid recipe, especially because they use dried mushrooms, which are always wonderfully intense.

I would salt the meat before searing, and I would definitely use more beef; maybe 50% more. And I always salt onions when I saute them, so do that too. Because I SAID SO!

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I use a company called Monterey Bay Herb Company when I need large quantities of stuff, like when I am making dry rub for my family. They don't even ask...they just bring the empty container and leave it on the kitchen counter.

Should I be flattered or offended? Not sure!

Anyway, the herbs and spices from that company seem to be of uniformly high quality, and extremely reasonably priced. But in these hyper-political times, the best part is that they aren't shoving their politics in my face. It's in California, so I am sure I would be correct in assuming it, but they don't bother telling me, and I keep buying from them.

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The old trope that one should cook with wine one would be happy drinking has reared its ugly and nonsensical head on this very blog. I thought that I had ranted enough about that snobbish and absolutely incorrect affectation.

Apparently not!

Don't do it. The heat of cooking destroys the subtleties of wine, and as long as the wine you use isn't corked (and that almost never happens) or otherwise spoiled, it will be perfectly fine for cooking.

If I see really cheap wine in the remainder bin of my local wine stores I will often buy a bottle or two for cooking. I try a splash when I open it, and those wines are usually very simple and not particularly interesting or fun to drink, but fantastic for cooking. And...you can refrigerate them for a very long time. And you can take that crap bottle from your idiot 2nd cousin that you tasted out of politeness and pour it into the cooking wine bottle! Who cares if they are mixed?

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[Hat Tip: uh...she doesn't want a hat tip, and I can see why!]

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The oyster imperative remains in effect, especially now that we are entering the summer months. Yup, I'm not afraid of oysters in the summer! And send pork rib roasts from the front end of the pig where all the good and fatty meat lives, carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, garlic...lots of garlic! (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

And don't think that the rest of you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm still watching you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.