Anything homemade beats anything out of a jar, or a box, or a can, or a package of any kind.
That's an immutable, a given, a fact of life as we've been told over and over again by cooks, chefs, gourmets, gourmands, and moms and grandmas since our ancestors found fire.
Before fire, everything tasted like dirt and twigs.
After fire, maybe everything tasted like chicken.
"How's that gator, Dave?"
"It tastes like chicken, Ed."
"Why we eatin' gator, Dave?"
Is your gator lacking that certain something you've come to expect in a reptile? If so, what won't help is my not-at-all-famous and not-very-good homemade barbecue sauce. And, yes, gator tastes like chicken.God Lord, I have tried and tried; then tried again and again. I can't do it. It's beyond my reach. I simply cannot make barbecue sauce that's any better than what comes in a bottle or jar.
Sometimes, it's not nearly as good as what comes in that jar or bottle. Sometimes, that cheap house-brand sludge that's mostly molasses tastes better than the stuff I slow cook right there with loving affection in my home.
You go with what you got, right? And what I got is that I am pretty darned good in the kitchen. No false display of modesty for me, it's true, it's an acquired skill. I worked at it, I learned basics over the years. I can cook better than most, although many cook better than me.
I heard it once said that, if you can read, you can cook. True? Nearly but not entirely. Reading, patience, caring, and attentiveness are also necessary to cook. You got all that, you got it made.
Since the '70s, I have studied, I have read. I have watched, I have listened. I have learned. Among the secrets is balance. Balancing flavors, complimenting flavors, knowing what works together, what does not. You must be smart and humble enough not to force together those that do not work. You build a dish. You build it layer by layer, layers of flavor. I know this, accept this, practice this.
To be clear, there is no formal training involved, and I surely could never run/manage a kitchen or a restaurant. But there is not a dish made in any restaurant, fine or otherwise, that I cannot make as well or better at home...then I hit that barbecue sauce wall.
Not all that long ago I gathered up the ingredients, while conjuring up the balance of flavors that would make for a genuinely good barbecue sauce. Layer by layer, I built the sauce element by element. Gently tinkering with apricot preserves which would play off the sharp edge of the crushed tomatoes, wedding the balance with sweet onion and next the tomato paste.
Then, just enough fresh garlic so that the palate would notice should it be missing. Fresh ground pepper, kosher salt, trace amounts of cumin and Worcestershire, a dash of turmeric to linger and nip at the tongue, and all then readied for a slow simmering. A few splats of a Louisiana hot sauce, a pinch, no make it two, of cayenne, the symphony was about to begin.
Wielding the baton to make beautiful the melody of barbecue sauce is that standard of standards when it comes to condiments. We're talking good old fashioned tomato ketchup, or catsup should you prefer. Good, finest quality, American ketchup. Heinz, what else? Many barbecue sauce makers don't want you to know the dirty little secret, but it's the ketchup that can put the magic in that gently bubbling dark red velvet.
Deep crimson, dark and smooth. Appealing to the eye, a very important ingredient itself, for the Chinese say you eat first with the eye.
Hours later...
"I wasn't crazy about the barbecue sauce." That's my wife. She's quick to praise my cooking, slow to criticize.
"Yeah, me neither." That's me. She was right. No need to feel at all deflated.
End of conversation on the barbecue sauce. End of me making barbecue sauce.
The next night it was Gruyere stuffed pork medallions with a balsamic port reduction sauce, sitting alongside a rutabaga carrot soufflé with a saute of shittake mushrooms? Tremendous, worthy of compliment, maybe could even win me
a prize of some sort.Barbecue sauce? Never made one worth a damn, but I have made my last, and that's a promise. Oh, my spaghetti sauce needs work, too.
