Its funny... when you make sauces you steal what you like. I remember using this and doing it right as he said. Then I made another batch using canned apple pie filling that I put in a blender with one of the liquids. I liked it better and kept it. No replacing the grated or blended onion though.
In addition, I always convert recipes to "Parts". You will notice that his powders are all in teaspoons. I find that so unlike him I woudl damn near say (hiving tasted his sauce) its a lie. Here is what I do/did. I made a blend. For instance the Garlic Powder to pepper to cayenne is a 3 - 1 - 1 parting. I make it up then add what I want to the taste I like. Cayenne stays as while, as does white pepper. I would expect he has a few ingredients that he leaves out. I get a cinnamon flare when I use the pie filling. I of course mentioned i reduce the brown sugar as well. But the major things I learned from this was how much better bacon bits (cheap) is than liquid smoke (lol). When you are at a contest you can smoke your sauce but making 5-20 gallons of the stuff you need the bacon bits. (OR you can smoke the apples and onions and they peel easy then blend them up)
Notice there is no salt? That salt will come from the bacon bits and soy so I remember using soy now. I also wondered if the bacon bits was 1/3 cup after being pulverized? That makes a huge difference. The way he writes it though it means literally grind 1/3 cups of bacon bits (which will mean you will have less than a 1/3 cup of course).
Back to spices... so once you make your spice blend -- and since transferring teaspoons in to parts relevant to the quantities we have in cups would be cumbersome -- I make up the blend then add the blend in in parts. As I make sauce in 5 gallon increments, I generally used toss in a whole damn cup when I was boiling the liquids then bumped it up after it simmered with the slurries to taste. I have to admit....eventually, wanting my sauce to go beyond Mills "written" recipe I started just dumping in my Podaddy's Butt Glitter Sprinkle, which was low salt anyway, and I had a nice apple/hickory based sauce that was still thin and sweet like his, easy to make in large quantities and had 13 other thingies in there to add some more background profile.
With just about every sauce recipe, generally, unless the pitmaster is just a cruel son of a bitch... the thing that matters is the overall slurry to liquid ratio.
4 Parts Ketchup
2.5 P White Vinegar
2 P Apple Cider
1 P Apple Cider Vinegar
1 P (half soy half worchestershire) thats my opinion on that
1.5 parts Grated Onion
*1.5 Parts Peeled grated apple
*2 P Brown Sugar
Spice blend and mustard to taste but you KNOW if I have my Butt Glitter and Hit Me Fred Sauce around thats going in there instead.
I do not think 2 teaspoons of grated bell pepper was crucial so I added one whole damn bell pepper per 5 gallons which is nowhere near what he writes down.. still cant taste it. LOL
*On the apple sugar thing. Its is simple. If I use a can of apple pie filling blended with apple cider until thin I will nix the sugar until the end IF needed.
Oh Dear God and Black Jesus.... now I know why my sauce is so much better than his WRITTEN version. I hope you all have learned a valuable lesson about getting recipes from World Champions. Remember, when they give it up, they also deflate the recipe a bit for the masses. If you want to see this in nation.... in his book turn to page 59 and read what he says about Wayne Monk's sauce just before he gives the recipe. When a guy lies about water... I bet he uses something else but in that quantity.
