Volumes have been written about barbecue sauce — there are about as many regional styles as there are places that serve smoked meats. Serious ’cue-heads have their favorites, partisans defend their hometown varieties and competition teams guard the recipes for their elixirs like they were state secrets.
And sure, you can always make your own to slather on whatever you’re putting on the grill this summer. But if you’re pressed for time — or can’t get your hands on your go-to brand — you might find yourself staring at a grocery shelf wondering which of the bottles to pluck. You’ve got enough on your mind, so let’s make this easier.
We took on the sticky task of tasting the top-selling brands and separating the good from the bland. We should note: Most of these sauces lean toward a smoky-sweet Kansas City-style.
First, we assembled the goods, tracking down the top sellers according to data from IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm (specifically, their data came from grocery, drug, mass market, convenience, military and select club and dollar retailers and covered the year ending June 3). “Private label” brands — supermarkets’ house labels, that is — are No. 4-selling on the list, so we scooped up a few from popular retail chains, opting for the “original”-style offerings where available to keep our samples as comparable as possible.
We enlisted eight tasters and asked them to score each sample on a scale of 1 to 10, meaning the maximum score was an 80, considering seasoning, texture and overall taste. The samples — which tasters tried on their own and on cubes of unseasoned, roasted chicken breast — were unlabeled, so the tasting was blind.
Tasters reached an overall consensus — there were few raves and generally low scores, meaning it seems our panel wasn’t super-impressed with the lot. Still, there were a few options you can find on many grocery shelves that we would welcome to the neighborhood cookout.
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