Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Apple Bacon BBQ Sauce

Thomas Keller is the nation's de facto chef laureate.  His culinary achievements are the stuff of legend, and his flagship restaurant, The French Laundry, has become a foodie mecca and the birthplace of many of our greatest up and coming chefs.  While I have spent much time admiring Thomas' achievements, cookbooks, and protege's, our two worlds have not crossed paths in any significant way.  But then the need for a Mother's Day gift sent me into a local Williams Sonoma, and I stumbled upon what you see pictured left.  Ad Hocis one of Thomas' more laid back restaurants in the Napa Valley.  It's family style.  No menu.  Simple food created with the same loving care as the pretty plates he creates at The French Laundry. So, it figures that he would bring a BBQ sauce to market under that label vs. The French Laundry BBQ sauce.  I picked up the jar and took a peek at the price. $16 for thirteen ounces of BBQ sauce.  Down here in the South, we'd say that Mr. Keller is awful proud of his sauce.  Our Northern brethren might be a little less genteel and a little more to the point.  That's a lot of scratch for some jacked up ketchup, Thomas.  I realized I was holding in my hands what was, for me, the most expensive bottle of BBQ sauce in the World. We're talking over a dollar an ounce, good people.

So, I bought the sauce and began tainting my mental jury before I could even get out of the parking lot.  See, I've made more than a few gallons of BBQ sauce from scratch in my day.  In fact, it was a bit of an obsession for a few years.  Along the way, I learned a lot of lessons, and I spread the gospel of fresh-sauce-over-bottled far and wide and made many converts along the way.  I drove home mentally working through my mise en place for the dish of sous vide Smug served over a bed of poached told-you-so that I was planning on sending over via FedeX to little Tommie in Yountville, CA.  Continue reading Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Apple Bacon BBQ Sauce here....

Comments

[healthy eating recipe]

sounds good apple bacon sauce....

[Todd @BinaryHaiku]

That is crazy expensive...but it sure does sound good.