How BBQ Cooking Changed How I View My Refrigerator Door

Good BBQ cooking starts with simple ingredients: Your choice of “main” (or what some would call “protein”), some salt and pepper, most likely some mustard, a special rub, and heat. It gets complicated when you start talking BBQ sauce.  As I have mentioned, BBQ is all about being local and that is also reflected in each style of sauce. From mopping and basting sauce in Texas, to North Carolina vinegar, to South Carolina mustard, to Kansas City sweet, to Alabama white, and Memphis no sauce, just the rub please.

There is a BBQ sauce for every palette and hundreds of options on the shelves. What I have learned is that all BBQ sauce is made from different ratios of pantry and fridge staples - vinegar, tomato (ketchup), sugar, mustard, mayo and peppers. The BBQ sauce you want to use for smoking and grilling is not necessarily the same BBQ sauce you want to use for finishing your roasted veggies or burgers or even use to create a tangy dip.  

This got me thinking. While working with our original BBQ sauce, our Staten Island based pitmaster Top Gun BBQ thought the sauce got too HOT when layered during the smoke process. My sister also noted that she thought it was too hot when she used it as a topper to her burger. For me it was perfect when I mixed it with mayo and my partner liked it with more heat and added hot sauce. Bottom line it is hard to make everyone happy with one BBQ sauce. 

I have an entire shelf of my refrigerator door dedicated to abandoned condiments and sauces that I used once and forgot they were there and now I don’t remember when I opened them or if they are even “good” anymore. Sound familiar? Given that, I most definitely don’t want to populate it with multiple BBQ sauces - sweet for Scott, no heat for Michaela, vinegar forward for me, lots of tomato for Kathy. This was an aha moment; I decided that we would create one BBQ sauce that was delicious for grilling and smoking but could be combined with a couple of ingredients to make the perfect sauce for everyone. 

We also reimagined out The Hot Stuff so that it is delicious on its own but works really well when combined with our BBQ sauce and other condiments. We call it the one hot sauce for everyone. It is a mellow heat that can be layered and built upon. It’s even for people who didn’t think they liked hot sauce. 

Mix some of The Hot Stuff with ketchup and The BBQ Sauce and you will have our original sauce. Mix The Hot Stuff with a little bit of cayenne and you will have the heat of our original sauce. Why have 6 bottles of various sauces that never get finished and forgotten when a bottle of Pure Grit BBQ Sauce, a bottle of The Hot Stuff and your kitchen door staples gives you hundreds of combinations? And when you toss in some of our BBQ Blend Rub, the combinations multiply.  

From left to right: From hot to not — different combinations of The Hot Stuff and The BBQ Sauce make countless BBQ styles.

It’s a new way of cooking, or the oldest trick in the book. Simple combinations that transform the fridge door and put fewer bottles on the shelf. Delicious mixes that put you in control of taste, and there’s more where that came from. 

We are proud to announce that as of December 1st our The BBQ Sauce and The Hot Stuff will be new formulas produced right here in NYC and we think you will love them.

Visit the recipe section on our website for some of our favorite sauce combos and please create your own and share with us @puregritbbq.