Lake Dogs
Quintessential Chatty Farker
I am of the belief that if you add anything, it is no longer off the shelf. It is an ingredient in YOUR sauce. I'm sure that most of us don't know how to make ketchup or Lawry's seasoning salt but they are 'off the shelf' and ingredients in your sauce. So don't say I doctored up someone's sauce. Take pride in your creation!!
That's why I referred to off-the-shelf pure. Otherwise it's just one
ingredient in our personal masterpiece. I make my own sauce, then we
take approximate 2 parts of it to 1 part of one off-the-shelf sauce and
another 1 part of another off-the-shelf sauce. You'd hardly know that
we used either of those two sauces when it's said and done. I expect
that probably at a minimum 1/2 and probably 80% of competitors do
something similar (doctoring some other off-the-shelf sauce).
We end up with a sauce that does pretty good in sauce contests, but
frankly we're not concerned with that ever. The sauce compliments
the meat without overpowering it. That's our objective. Last comp
we received rave reviews of how it does this very thing (I was very
pleasantly surprised). We did end up running out of sauce as a
result (we expected 20 - 30 family and friends eating BBQ; not over 100).
It was a very fun outing. Luckily we'd cooked 170+- lbs of pork shoulders
so the pork held out, but the sauce was gone and we ended up pulling
a little Head Country out of the reserve (we dont use it normally in any
portions). The only problem with ordering sauces online is that when
you have a sauce emergency (as we did) you can't just send someone to
the store to go grab another case. But, that's a story for another
brethren forum...