Review Mon Sep 15 2008

One Sauce to Rule Them All?

By Naz Hamid

Sauces are the cornerstone of my culinary experience, both at home and when eating out. I appreciate a good sauce when I come across it, savoring it, letting it do its job while at the same time, I'm trying to figure out what it's made of.

In my fridge, the door shelves are stacked with sauces of all kinds. Hot sauces, Asian cooking sauces, dressings, bases, you name it, I'll have it.

Recently, two bottles of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce found their way to me. I'd never heard of it before though the bottle looked familiar. I'm sure, nestled amongst the dozens of bottles that line grocery shelves, this sauce sat, incognito, its more flashy and designed bottles shouting for my attention instead.

I'm sizing the sauce up, bottle first. The sauce is apparently "All Natural," so that piqued my interest. Nope, no high fructose corn syrup found in the ingredient list here. They say it's good on all sorts of meats and even fries. Its applications run the gamut — grill, cook, marinate or dip!

Let's test it shall we? I happened to have received the two bottles while at Moody's Pub, during a GB Get Together in fact, so we group tested the bottle of sauce with fries and on burgers (for those who had them). I was skeptical, expecting an A1-esque sauce, which I'm just not fond of. We were all proven wrong -- if proven wrong means a haggle of people fighting for the bottle for more sauce for their fries of burgers. Yes, the sauce was popular.

How does it taste? I finger-tested it before committing to it as the dipping sauce of choice for my fries that night, and I was happy to find that it wasn't A1-like at all but a combination of the spiciness and kick of Worcestershire melded with the smokiness of a good BBQ sauce. As a fan of both of the aforementioned sauces, it was a winner in my book. The sauce is runnier than you might expect. It's the consistency of what you'd expect if you did put Worcestershire and a BBQ sauce together. Thick enough to coat but not clump in a pile like a thicker sauce would.

Since then, I've put the sauce through its paces. I've marinated and grilled, sauteed with fish and vegetables (cut with other sauces), added just a bit here and there or used it as a base. It works particularly well as a marinade; I grilled some tofu steaks with the sauce as the marinade and it came out beautifully. With fish, a little goes a long way, but it gives a good strong flavored fish like salmon some smokiness and kick when cut with some butter and herbs.

Fries and, in particular, sweet potato fries are a perfect match.

Country Bob's was originally made by Bob Edson in 1968, so this sauce has been around a good while, having hit major distribution in 1982. The company is local — the corporate office is in Centralia, Illinois.

An interesting aspect to Country Bob's, sauce-unrelated, is their CEO. "Christ is our CEO." To some that might be a turn-off, but don't let that sort of thinking hold you back from some mighty tasty stuff that may indeed have been made with a touch of divinity.

And showing good faith, you can even try this sauce for free.