BBQgeek

Rod's Rubs Review - Steak Out!

At this point in my BBQ career, I've tried dozens upon dozens of homemade rub recipes and all but given up on commercial blends.  In fact, the only meat that I really give thought to applying a rub to these days is pork.  Beef, fish, shellfish, and lamb all get the same dash of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper before they hit my grill.  That all changed with a chance encounter at a local BBQ club meeting.  That fateful Sunday I ran into a guy named Rod who just so happened to have a trunk full of custom made rubs bouncing around.  Before I left the parking lot, Rod had loaded me down with his steak rub, Steak Out!, and his blackening rub, In the Black!.   He promised that the distinguishing aspect of his rubs were a carefully thought out and tested balance of flavors.  I rolled home eager to give them a try but fully prepared to be disappointed.

It took a good five or six days before beef made its way onto the home menu, but when it did I decided to give Steak Out! a try.  I had a couple nice looking ribeye steaks and  I loaded them down heavy with Steak Out!  I was more than nervous about laying the rub on so heavy, but I really wanted to get a sense of what the rub had to offer.  I could tell from sight that this wasn't another variation on Montreal Steak.  There way far too much red stuff (Paprika?  Cayenne?) and I could make out little green bits of herb (oregano?  thyme?)  So, it was with trepidation and a bit of excitement that I let the steaks hit the Weber.

Confession time -  While I was grilling the steaks, I performed my traditional poke test to determine the doneness of my steaks.  When I jammed my index finger into my mouth I was surprised to not taste salt.  Most steak rubs lean HEAVILY to the salt side of things.  This time around I was greeted with a delicious mixture of flavors.  I took the steaks inside and quickly got to work plating them, eager to taste what was going on.  What I learned was that Rod may have stumbled on bottled lightning.  Since that first night trying out Rod's Rubs, I have played extensively with both rubs.  I've tried them on grilled shrimp, fish filets, veggies - you name it.  This stuff really lives up to the tag line of "What can't you rub it on?".  My personal favorite is the Steak Out! rub, but don't overlook In the Black.    I really hope you'll take the time to visit Rod's Rub website and order some for yourself.  I've had the opportunity to speak at length with Rod since trying his rubs and from my perspective he is taking a shot at this business for all the right reasons.  He's earnest, likable, and genuinely knowledgeable about what makes good BBQ. 

You got Bacon in my Chocolate Bar! The strange tale of Mo's Bacon Bar

     I stepped into my cube at the Monster Telco one unassuming Friday morning to discover that things were not as I had left them.  Someone had left me a gift.  I rubbed my eyes and refocused just to make sure that I wasn't looking at a mirage.  It was still there, beckoning to me to sit down and discover its wonders.  Mo's Bacon Bar.  Three sweet words.  Eleven sweet letters.  Could it be that someone had read my mind and decided to combine the two greatest flavors in the world?  It appeared so.  Sadly, I had just had breakfast and knew that I was too full to consume the bar immediately.  I wanted to savor this experience, so I set the bar aside and tried to begin my day at work.  Just to the left of my laptop it sat all morning, distracting me from all things Telco.  During the morning hours, I discovered who gave me the Bacon Bar and also why they had given it to me.  The Bacon Bar was a birthday gift to the wife of a friend.  Three of attendees at the party tried the Bacon Bar, but decided it was unfit for human consumption.  Before throwing it away, they thought "Let's Get Mikey!  Yeah!". 

At high noon, I bolted from the cube and headed over to see my chef buddies at Haven and Valenza.  I found Chef Matt, showed him the Bacon Bar, and asked him if he would be brave enough to try it with me.  "Heck Yeah!", he replied.  We each broke off a square of the bar and took a bite.  My head swooned.  I saw visions of pigs, and rainbows, and unicorns.  My taste buds cried for mercy.  It was too good to be true.  It was a perfect marriage of porky goodness, salty saltiness, and milk chocolate (dark chocolate never would have worked).  My only complaint was that the bacon wasn't evenly distributed throughout the bar.  Some bites were more bacony than others.  Chef Matt fell out of his chair onto the floor and began chanting in some foreign tongue - the only discernible word being "baaaaccccooooonnnn".  I knew he was enjoying it too, but I took advantage of his near paralytic state to consume the rest of bar by myself.

So, in my highly unscientific survey, the Bacon Bar was preferred by two of five people with their heads planted firmly on their shoulders.  I feel pity for the three remaining respondents who couldn't grasp the deliciousness of the salty-sweet treat.  It's not like it's a new idea.  These guys had a similar idea some time ago and look how well it turned out for them.  All Mo's Bacon Bar needs is a swell commercial and they could dominate the candy market forever.

Grill Mates Grill Kit Giveaway!

The fine folks at McCormick's offered up a fantastic collection of their best grilling spice blends for one lucky reader of BBQgeek.com.   The grilling kit includes 11 dry spice blends, including their new Montreal Steak grinder, Salmon spice, and Seafood spice, as well as a half dozen prepackaged marinades.  All that is required to win is a simple email to bbqgeek@gmail.com explaining, in 25 words or less, why you really want this package.  Extra points will be granted for creativity (and lunacy).  Feel free to attach crazy pictures of your smoker/grill or anything else that you feel will give you an edge on the competition.  Judging of submissions will be completely subjective and solely based upon how much you can amuse me within your 25 word limit.  The submission window opens today, 06/20/2008, and closes two weeks from now on 07/04/2008 (Independence Day!).  The winner will be announced here on BBQgeek and I'll ship this big ol' box to you free of charge!

You might be asking yourself why a seasoned BBQ fiend, such as myself, would be interested in a bunch of pre-mixed spice blends.  Why wouldn't I throw together a rub for myself?   Truth be told, I do prefer to put together my own rubs, as it allows me control over my mix of salt, sugar, and aromatic spices.  However, it isn't always feasible to throw together a 10 spice rub on a Wednesday night at 8:30 pm after you have put the kids to bed and you are starving.  Sometimes you just want to reach into the spice cabinet and grab a spice shaker of something tasty and grill it up.  I've used McCormick's spices many times and found them to taste pretty darn good for a commercial blend.  The above picture is some grilled red snapper I cooked tonight that I seasoned with McCormick's new Seafood Blend.  I grilled it up and served it with a cold salad of fava beans, Georgia sweet corn, basil, and some heirloom cherry tomatoes.   I don't mind saying it was pretty tasty.  Among the spice blends I'm looking forward to trying in the grilling kit is the cinnamon/chipolte rub.  I'm thinking about trying to pull off some sort of Moroccan style lamb dish (thanks to David Poe for the suggestion.)

Anyway, submit your entries and try hard to tickle my funny bone.  I'm looking forward to seeing what you folks can send my way.  Remember one important thing - you have to play to win.

Blue Smoke BBQ Sauce Review

There are two components to great BBQ - smoked meat and sauce.  I've spent many hours learning how to properly smoke meat and just as many hours working on my own BBQ sauce.  Between the two, the real mystery and finesse is in the sauce.  That's not to say I believe all  BBQ requires a good sauce.  To the contrary, I think properly smoked meat can stand on its own.  But, folks expect sauce with their BBQ and that's where the boys get separated from the men. 

Fresh BBQ sauces are a beast unto themselves.  Once you've tasted a fresh BBQ sauce, you will never look at a bottled sauce the same way.  To my palate, fresh sauces win the day every time.  However,  bottled BBQ sauce is an enormous market in the food industry these days.  Just take a look at the multitude of varieties offered at your local grocer.  One of the major signs that a restaurant, or a competition team, or a chef has risen in the  food business is to see if they have their own sauce.   Everyone is doing it these day.  Emeril, Stubbs, Williamson Bros, Kraft, Bullseye, KC Masterpiece are just a few of the major players on the shelves.

The Big Dogs of the NYC BBQ scene these days are the Blue Smoke boys.  Their restaurant launch was assisted my BBQ legend Mike Mills, and by all accounts these guys know how to do serious BBQ(even though they are from the North.)  So, I was quite interested when I ran across a display of Blue Smoke BBQ sauces at my local Williams & Sonoma.  You might say I was even excited.  Mike Mill's account of the Blue Smoke launch is one of the highlights in his book,  Peace Love and BBQ.  I liked everything I read about Blue Smoke.  They adhered to traditional Southern standards and methods, but looked outside the box for new combinations. I thought their sauces might offer something new and unexpected.  When I picked up the first bottle from the shelf in Williams and Sonoma, I almost fell over when I saw the price - $9.50!!!  These boys are MIGHTY PROUD of their sauce.  At the same time, I had a pit in my stomach.  How are you going to possibly live up to a $9.50 price tag when your high volume competitors are running at less than $3.00 a bottle?  I had a hard time believing they could pull it off.

     To test the Blue Smoke sauces, I ran down to my buddies at Sam and Dave's BBQ and picked up a half pound of pulled pork, chicken, and brisket.  I ran home to conduct my taste test.  I put the two sauces (Carolina Kick and Original Recipe) in a couple ramekins and laid the meat out.  Each meat was introduced to each sauce.  Between samples, I cleansed my palate with water.  I jotted down my initial impressions on a couple post-it notes.  Here's a direct transcription:

Carolina Kick - Wow! Vinegar.  Mustard.  Too much mustard.  No tomato notes.  No hot sauce flavor.  Basically a mustard/vinegar sauce.  But not bad.  Very thin.  Doesn't adhere to the meat.

Original Recipe - Hmm.   Lots of bell pepper flavor.  Not finding the tomato flavor.  Not very sweet.  Good viscosity and sheen.  Not my cup of tea.

It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts after the first pass of tastings.  I felt let down.  There were not any miracles here.  I decided to read over the ingredient lists for each  sauce while I decided which I liked best.  That's when the big surprise showed up.  I've read many a ingredient list on a BBQ sauce.  This one was conspicuously devoid of fructose and other ominous sounding compounds.  Everything on each of these lists was very familiar.  The only things that sounded out of place were the xantham gum and the soybean oil, but I know those get included to increase shelf stability and viscosity.  Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the flavors, I could appreciate that these guys had taken the hard road in creating their sauce. 

Over the course of the next couple weeks, I tried the sauces on a variety of other meats - rotisserie chicken, ribs, anything I could find.  I really never gained a taste for either one, but I still respected them as good sauces.  They just were not my kind of sauces.  In the end, I threw them away when they were a little less than half full and returned to my homemade BBQ sauce.

So, the final verdict - - I like the Carolina sauce better than the original recipe.  There's just something wrong with that original recipe for me.  I don't know if it is a regional difference.  I recall eating Dinosaur BBQ sauce (also from NYC and Syracuse, NY)  a couple years ago and the Dinosaur sauce was the first thing I thought of when I first tasted the Blue Smoke original recipe.  Maybe I just don't get Northern BBQ sauce.  Beyond that, these boys need to find a way to lower the cost to the consumer.  I'm sure I paid a premium by shopping at Williams Sonoma, but GOSH $9.50 is a lot to pay for BBQ sauce.  So, I'll keep watching to see if anything else comes out from Blue Smoke and I encourage you to go out and try their sauces for yourself.