Hej og godt nytår ! *

Long time no see… Let’s hope that we will be able to write more reviews in 2010 than in 2009

Last time, we reviewed a sauce our friend Fix brought us back from New York, and last summer our friends Ingrid and Lionel brought us back a sauce from Danemark, that’s the one we’re going to talk about today: Morten Heiberg “Original Dansk Kvalitet” Barbecue Sauce.

First of all, the packaging is really cool and eye candy. Simple, sober, original with a shiny flame standing in the middle of the label.
Its deep red color is not bad either and the logo+color's combination makes you think that it’s spicy inside.

The sweet and vinegar smell is also great and the sauce is not really thick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste like expected: it’s rather bland; the only thing that stands out is a shy spicy kick.
Maybe that it would be a better sauce for grilling than for dipping.

In the end, we could say that Danish people are better in making Lego’s than barbecue sauces !

Sorry about the ingredients but they’re only listed in Danish and I’m not that good at Danish... so here’s the picture:

* Hello and happy new year

Yiiiiihaaaaaaa, we’re back on track ! Sorry for having been away the last 3 months but we've had a very busy summer (see previous post)

Friends of us brought us back some bbq sauces from holidays that we hadn't the time to taste yet, so let’s start with the sauce that our mate Fix brought us back from NY last spring: Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Barbecue Sauce !

 
When I read the review of this sauce (well, the regular one) on bbqsaucereviews, I was quite impatient to tasting it because of its great score of 4/5.

Its smell reveals a delightful smokey and vinegar aroma… what a good start ! (Marie : and a SO sweet aroma as well !!!).
And its taste is really sweet (well, I just told you the smell was too sweet ), it’s almost like maple syrup barbecue sauce, but still has a good tangy/spicy aftertaste. The sauce is also very thick and sticky.

I wanted to try it hot, so I poured it on sliced chicken breast when they were grilling in the pan… oh gosh, it turned into caramel, I also had the feeling of eating asian-style caramel chicken; it was perfect with some “Ranch Style” baked beans and oven-cooked tomatoes.

 
Even if this sauce is apparently a mass market product, you can read its story on the back label: “In 1985, my brother, Chef Larry Raymond perfected the family’s recipe and entered our sweet and tangy barbecue sauce into the country’s largest rib cookoff. He named it after the nickname I got while playing basketball on Chicago’s West Side - “Sweet Baby Ray”. The sauce is so fine, the taste beat out nearly 700 entries in the riboff. Within a year, Larry and I, along with our high school friend Mike O’Brien, formed a company around our award-winning sauce and our simple philosophy about barbecue “The Sauce Is The Boss.”

 
Website: http://www.sweetbabyrays.com
Oh and by the way, you can now access the site also via www.bbqsauce.be !

We are SO sorry about being badly unattending our blog but we've got good reason... We got married this weekend !

I promise we will be back soon for new reviews (we found the two others Jack Daniel's BBQ sauces, friends brought some sauces back from holidays... and we HAVE to share that with you !)

Till then, ENJOY LIFE !

Marie & Nico

This evening, we organised a death match between 3 sauces you can find in junk food restaurants in Belgium: 

#1: McDonalds barbecue sauce

#2: Quick barbecue sauce

 
#3: Hector Chicken barbecue sauce


They fought bravely against each other, a gang of homemade nuggets playing the sheriffs.


And the winner is *drum roll*, McDonalds barbecue sauce !

Why that ? 

The Hector Chicken smells like an ashtray and tastes like a juice made out of old socks. Ugh !

The Quick one is made by the same company as the Hector one, Gyma, but it’s not the same; and even if it’s not as disgusting, it smells the vinegar too much and tastes nothing but sour.

In comparison, the McDonalds one has a good smokey and sweet smell, a great colour and a really sweet taste and it has the best packaging amongst the three: simple, clean, nice color and shiny helvetica bold. Too bad they don’t sell it in bottles, we would definitely buy some !

Watch out for more death matchs ! Maybe against Dominoes Pizza barbecue sauce or Burger King barbecue sauce. By the way, the best bbq sauce we’ve tasted so far was in Burger King in Nyugati tér station in Budapest

Summer is coming along with summer festivals, and if you want to “put some music in your food” you should try out the Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce Jerk/BBQ.

This looks kinda famous in the UK but you cannot find it in Belgium, except in English food stores like Stonemanor’s.

 
Do not trust this sauce at first sight. It really looks like any other regular barbecue sauce, even if it’s less thick. And you would probably think that it tastes sweet since reggae is kinda chill…

Terrible mistake ! This sauce should be called “Black Black Metal Sauce”, when you uncap it, its spicy and vinegar smell is like a drum roll in your face. Oh gosh, now I’m afraid to taste it again… let’s take a deep breath ! 

The first taste is as evil as the smell, it’s quite sweet and vinegar at first and then comes the hotness and your tongue starts tickeling more and more. We like spicy food, but the first time we tried it, we would’nt have expected a so hot taste so we had a “generous splash on the side of almost anything”,  like said on the label… and we kinda (fully) regretted it.

I’m wondering if we’ll be able to empty this bottle (never)… but it could be useful to fool our friends around

Found at Stonemanor’s in Waterloo.
Quantity per bottle: 310g