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A sauce of some substance Mike was driving home to LA from a business trip to Kansas City. In Arizona he sees an elderly man walking on the side of the road. He stops and asks if he would like a ride. With a silent nod of thanks, the elder got into the car. Driving on, Mike tries in vain to make a bit of small talk with the man. The old man just sat silently, looking intently at everything he saw, studying every little detail, until he noticed a brown bag on the seat next to Mike. "What in bag?" asked the old man. Mike looked down at the brown bag and said, "It's a bottle of barbecue sauce from Arthur Bryant's. I got it for my wife." The old timer was silent for another moment or two. Then speaking with quiet wisdom, he said: "Good trade..."

Dry Rubs Rendezvous Famous Seasoning (Memphis, TN). Charlie Vergos' famed Rendezvous Restaurant in Memphis is renowned the world around for its "dry" ribs, served with no sauce, only this complex spice blend which includes paprika, chili powder, garlic, black pepper, salt, onion powder, oregano, thyme, celery seed, cayenne pepper, coriander, and who knows what else. You've gotta have a good spice blend to pull this off. Blues Hog Dry Rub Seasoning (Perry, MO). Unmatched in complexity and balance, this is by far my favorite rub in the world. It has salt, important for pulling flavors into the meat, sugar, important for enhancing the natural meat flavors and helping for the crust on the meat, paprika, for color and richness, chili powder, black pepper, mustard, for heat, onion, garlic, ginger, cumin, and green herbs for complexity. Perfect for pork and beef. Texas Rib Rangers Rosemary & Herb Seasoning (Denton, TX). The standard barbecue rubs are red from paprika and chili powder. This one is loaded with green things like basil, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, and bay leaves along with the necessary garlic, onion, salt. There is also a noticeable kick from red pepper balanced by sugar. It is great on pork chops, chicken, turkey, and even pork shoulders. Try rubbing up a pork loin with this stuff and wear your seatbelt at the dining table.

Hot sauces Click here to read about Meathead's favorite hot sauces.

Steak sauces New York Steakhouse Cookout Companions. When it comes to steak, connoisseurs genuflect towards Texas and Chicago. I live in Chicago, so it is with heavy heart that I say "I'll take Manhattan", where the fabled and expensive steakhouses are the best in the world. Most steaks are best eaten naked, but if you want to kick it up a notch, several have developed manly sauces that add a layer of interest to their meats. The New York First Company has packaged five distinctive sauces from some of the nation's cathedrals of beef: Smith & Wollensky, Frankie & Johnnie's, Ben Benson's, Uncle Jack's, and Ottomanelli's, New York's venerable butcher shop. Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce. Country Bob may call this an "all purpose" sauce but it's a steak and burger sauce to me, and it's a durn good one at that. Far less salty than than A1 and Lawry's, it is a bit thinner and sweeter, but it is also more flavorful. I rarely put a sauce on steak, but if you try Country Bob's on burgers instead of ketchup, you may never go back. I have also used it as an ingredient in some of my sauce recipes and it works just fine.

Other Fun Sauces

Dreamland Bar-B-Que Sauce (Tuscaloosa, AL).

In 1958, John "Big Daddy" Bishop opened the Dreamland Café in Tuscaloosa, AL, the same year legendary football Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant arrived in Tuscaloosa. The ribs ascended to legendary, cooked fast but cooled with their thin flavorful sauce. The base is mostly vinegar and water, rounded out with tomato paste and mustard so it is a pale runny orange color that penetrates the meat and doesn't just squat on it. The taste is tangy, tart, with a noticeable hot pepper spice that lingers looooonnng. It is more like a Lexington Dip than anything else. Not everyone will like this one, but I love it.

El Gringo Mexican Barbeque Fusion (Warrenville, IL). Another winner from the creative kitchen of Chef Rick Kazdan. As is his style, it is rich, thick and complex, and although it comes from a Chicago burb, it tastes Mexican. There's molasses, honey, tamarind, chopped garlic, vinegar, chipotles in adobo, and other goodies held together by ketchup and tomato paste. It is a great balance of sweet and tart and hot. Try it on ribs, chicken, or anything else on which you'd put a tomato based barbecue sauce.

El Gringo Loco Sweet Island Heat (Warrenville, IL). Rick Kazdan calls his enterprise a "micro salsaria" because it is small, and his sauces are handcrafted, like a micro brewery. I'll buy that. At the moment he sells them mostly online and at farmer's markets around Chicago. I'm hoping he can grow beyond that. Sweet Island Heat is made in the tropical islands just west of Chicago, but one taste and you'd swear you were in Jamaica, mon. It is amber in color, thick as jam, chunky, flecked with herbs and spices, and shiny. It's really a chutney in my book. Ginger jumps out as soon as you open the jar, and when you get it in your mouth it explodes with tropical flavors like pineapple, orange, mango, and garlic, underpinned by a decent but not overbearing kick from jerk seasoning, chili sauce, and habanero puree. The ingredient list says there's also apple juice, grape juice, onion, and even banana. I like it as a dipping sauce for anything fried, especially chicken, fish, or samosas. Lately I've been dipping pretzel rods in the convenient wide mouth jar.

Charlie Trotter's Organic Thai Barbecue Sauce (Chicago, IL). Forget everything you know about barbecue sauce. The great iconoclast chef has crafted this sweet, raisiny, citrusy sauce with sesame oil undertones and only a hint of heat for fish. Exquisite. Known for crafting unusual combinations of flavor, Trotter is often listed as one of the 10 greatest chefs in the nation and his Chicago restaurant is booked months in advance. Now you can bring a taste of Trotter to your next cookout.

Johnny V's Barbecue Sauce (Chicago, IL). Made in a Chicago suburb by Johnny Vogel (he is not connected to the popular Ft. Lauderdale restaurant named Johnny V's), this shiny, thick brown sauce has a dominant flavor: G-A-R-L-I-C. It is rich, strong, smoky, and even has clumps of garlic floating in it. A bit salty, there is a nice black pepper tang in the background and a looooonnnnng garlicky finish. Here's something I've never seen before: One of the ingredients is sweet potato! Did I mention there is a strong garlic aroma? Let's call it KC style with an Italian accent. I like it on burgers as well as my ribs. It is sold only in stores around Chicago.

Sweet Glaze

Blues Hog Barbecue Sauce (Perry, MO). A thoroughly creative and unusual sauce from the middle of nowhere in Perry, Missouri. Bill Arnold has crafted this intriguing sauce from practically every herb and spice on his rack. Garnet colored, runny at room temp and thick from the fridge, it is laden with flecks of black pepper, green herbs, mustard seeds, chile peppers, a generous hit of cumin, and all manner of edible grit. Actually more of a glaze, it varnishes your meat with a glossy sheen and deep sea complexity. A bit too sweet (brown sugar is the first item on the ingredients list), it is not unctuous because there are layers of red pepper heat, black pepper bite, nutty garlic, and grassy herbaceousness. It made my ribs sing, and try as I might, I have been unable to duplicate it. One word or warning: Because it is so sweet, use only one layer. Multiple coats is too much. The best source for Blues Hog products is Hawgeyes BBQ in Ankeny, Iowa. By the way, Hawgeyes is also a great source for other hard to find sauces, rubs, cookers, and all things barbecue. In 2007 it won top prize at the American Royal Sauce Championship in Kansas City.

I have come to a conclusion about this stuff, and Buz is not gonna like hearing this, but it is the world's best ketchup. By far. Ketchup is tomato paste with vinegar, herbs, spices, and sweetener. Tomato-based barbecue sauce is usually ketchup with more of the same. So really, Kansas City style sauces are just amped up ketchups. The big diff is that ketchup is tomatoey, and barbecue sauce is less so. Well this stuff is tomatoey, and it is incredible on burgers, fries, meatloaf, and everything I love ketchup on.

Whiskey Sauce

Dr. Dan's BBQ Sauce Magical Meat Elixir, Kentucky Bourbon (Springfield, OH). Dr. Dan has made this boozy brown, medium-thick elixir by starting with his very rich and nuanced "Original Formula" sauce and adding extract of Bourbon (sorry, there's no alcohol in it, so it's safe for the kiddies). Try it on beef brisket or venison.

Fruit Based Sauces

Ole Ray's Blackberry Wine Barbecue & Cooking Sauce (St. Augustine, FL). A thick dark brown glop whose fruity flavor from blackberry jelly and wine has multiple dimensions from smoke flavor, a mild pepper kick, and good crisp acidity from vinegar and lemon juice. This is not a novelty sauce. It has real richness and depth. I am also a big fan of the Ole Ray's Apple/Cinnamon Barbeque Sauce, a KC style red sauce with a distinct apple note and a long layered heat in the finish.

Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce

South Carolina Yellow Mustard BBQ Sauce

East Carolina Mop & Sauce

Lexington Mop & Sauce

Alabama White Sauce

Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q Original White Sauce (Decatur, AL). This is not what everyone thinks of when they think of barbecue sauce. It is white, first of all. And it is not sweet. It almost like a salad dressing and it is especially formulated for smoked chicken. Mayonnaise dominates, followed by mustard, black pepper, and vinegar. Not everyone likes it. But it's a classic and worth a try if you love barbecue. If you don't like it on chicken, it's just fine on coleslaw.

Texas Mop Sauces

Cooper's BBQ Sauce (Llano, TX). The best Texas barbecue sauce is a puzzlement. It is made to complement beef brisket. It is at all not sweet, it is thin, more like a gravy or a thin tomato soup than a sauce, heavily spiked with vinegary tartness, a splash of hot sauce, and probably flavored with chili or ancho powder, black pepper, cumin, onion, and garlic. It easily penetrates the meat rather than sitting on top.

The problem is that the stuff in the bottle is nothing like the stuff you get served at the pit. The picture here shows the sauce bucket at Cooper's sitting on the pit where they hold meats for customers to select. They start by dumping their bottled sauce in the bucket in the morning, and as the day goes by, the trimmings go in, and if you want sauce on your meat, it is dunked in the bucket. Before long it tastes a LOT different than the bottled stuff. Doesn't that look good enough to jump in to? So don't expect bottled Texas sauces to taste at all like this because they don't have the trimmings and drippings. Now there are plenty of good sauces in Texas, among my faves are those by Texas Rib Rangers recommended elsewhere on this page, but they are really more Kansas City style than Texas style.

To come close to the real deal, you could blend a good beef stock with the bottled sauce, or perhaps some drippings from a roast beef. You can come close by starting from scratch with my Texas BBQ Juice recipe.

To make things worse, Cooper's has a minimum purchase on their website so you just can't order a bottle. If you're tempted, add a brisket onto your order.

Lone Star Texas Style BBQ Sauce. Garnet color, thick, smooth, not too sweet, complex, tastes like it has liquid smoke, but it is not on the ingredient list and producer swears it is not in there. Complex with Texas flavors including chili cumin, black pepper, and beer! Mild warm heat in the finish.