Smokin' Willies

At some point in the past couple of years, I visited a food trade show with Scott and his mom on a trip to California. We'd never been to such a thing before and did not know what to expect, but oh, we found great things.

The show was jam-packed with vendors hawking all sorts of high-end sauces, juices, and other delectable goodies, as well as a few hucksters trying to convince us we wanted their crummy pots or whatever. But mostly, we were having a grand old time sampling some of the freshest and most delicious tasting packaged products available on the market.

I remember we loved some fancy (and pricey) pasta sauce that was mostly chunks of cheese in good oil, and Scott's mom was crazy over a line of pesto-like fresh herb sauces, including one made with Scott's dad's favorite herb, cilantro.

However, the most prevalent product at the show was barbecue sauce. We sampled dozens of varieties, and when we left the show that day, we were laden down with several bottles from a company called Smokin' Willie's.

This sauce is fabulous. It beats the pants off any other barbecue sauce I've ever tried. It's light-years beyond any of those Kraft or KC Masterpiece bottles crowding the supermarket shelves in terms of flavor.

I admit to having had a certain fondness for Sweet Baby Ray's sauce for dipping chicken nuggets in over the years, but Smokin' Willie's is way more flavorful than the typical sweet and tangy barbecue slop.

It's spicy without an overwhelming heat, it has sweetness without being overly thick and gloppy, and it has a good hint of barbecue smokiness without knocking you out when using it for dipping.

Even better, Smokin' Willie's sauce manages to keep its flavor fresh and punchy without resorting to a ton of weird ingredients. It's the real deal, the kind of sauce you might make yourself if, you know, you actually made barbecue sauce from scratch.

I love the original, but I also enjoy the two other varieties of sauce the company makes. The Fiesta with Chipotle sauce has some real kick to it if you like your barbecue spicy, and the Shanghai-Style sauce has that sort of lip-smacking Korean-barbecue flavor I am always trying to capture on my own.

Another great thing about Smokin' Willie's original sauce is that it's less sugary than typical supermarket sauces (and there's no high-fructose corn syrup!), so it's not ruinous to your diet. It's thinner and saucier without all the sugar turning it gooey.

I've found Smokin' Willie's sauce at Whole Foods, and if you check the web site the company lists additional stores where you can find it. I (and Scott) highly recommend giving it a try. And if you're coming to Slovakia in the next four months . . .

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food, groceries, reviews, barbecue sauce