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See why.High-End Barbecue Sauces
We put four small-batch, mail-order barbecue sauces to the test against our supermarket favorite.
Published July 1, 2013. Appears in America's Test Kitchen TV Season 14: Best Barbecued Chicken and Cornbread
What You Need To Know
Small-batch barbecue sauces promise pit-master magic—but are they worth their higher price tags? To find out, we mail-ordered four products that had some buzz, were award winners, or were marketed by barbecue pros.
We sampled the sauces plain and on grilled chicken, focusing on sweetness, complexity, texture, and overall appeal. Our two least favorite sauces were too sweet, containing twice the amount of sugar per serving as the others. A third sauce was watery and mild. But the fourth, our winner, delivered. With generous additions of vinegar, salt, and chili paste along with liquid smoke, it was tart, spicy, and more savory than sweet. It also had enough body to cling to the chicken.
To see how our high-end winner compared with our supermarket winner—a sweet, tomato-based classic—we held a taste test on grilled chicken. Votes were evenly split on these very different sauces. For traditionalists, our supermarket winner is best, but for a savory, tangy sauce with a kick, we recommend splurging on our high-end winner.
Everything We Tested
*All products reviewed by America’s Test Kitchen are independently chosen,
researched, and reviewed by our editors. We buy products for testing at retail
locations and do not accept unsolicited samples for testing. We list suggested
sources for recommended products as a convenience to our readers but do not endorse
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Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
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