Another vote for Sweet Baby Ray’s Hickory and Brown Sugar. I don’t use barbecue sauce very often, and am quite happy with this one, so I’m sticking with it, pun intended.
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It’s been a while since I’ve had Bone Suckin’ Sauce. It didn’t grab me, but I need to try it again.
If you’re talking about anchovies, that’s because so many bbq sauces use Worcestershire sauce.
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Not just anchovies. Chicken broth too.
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That’s a new one.
I have never heard of stock of any kind going into barbecue sauce…and would be highly suspect of any recipe that included it.
Even Worcestershire would get a raised eyebrow in the American South, where it originates.
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I’ve never seen broth or stock as an ingredient either.
Worcestershire sauce is very common. I bought three sauces today, and all three have Worcestershire sauce. Only one of the ingredients lists shows anchovies, so maybe the other two are using some sort of anchovy-less Worcestershire sauce or maybe they’re included in the “natural flavor” on the labels. Three Little Pigs Kansas City Competition, Plowboys KC Crossroads, and Rob’s Frog Sauce(anchovies on the label.) They’re all new to me, but I won’t be opening them for a while.
Of the sauces I do have open, two have Worcestershire sauce (Killer Hogs The BBQ Sauce and Head Country Hickory) and two don’t (Kinder’s Mild and Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle.) The Killer Hogs label lists anchovies, but the Head Country label doesn’t.
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“Even Worcestershire would get a raised eyebrow in the American South, where it originates.”
OK. I’ll bite. As a Brit I’m not sure if I can let that go unquestioned! 
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Where barbecue sauce originates. Not Worcestershire.
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Ahh…Indeed. I retract.
We cannot claim barbecue anything, really!
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What raises my transplanted Southern eyebrow is a commercial product that uses a prepared product like Worcestershire sauce. Vinegar, molasses, oily fish, tamarind, allium, … sure. Great Grandma Margaret’s BBQ sauce at a farmers market with Worcestershire sauce in it, sure. If Kraft decided to use the Lee & Perrins brand on a line of barbecue sauce and cross promote, okay. Otherwise, at commercial scale, I don’t see anything to be proud of by using and citing Worcestershire sauce, and I’d wonder about the quality of communication between the food scientists and the bean counters.
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YES!
My go-to Pat’s is completely vegan, and wins thumbs up to everyone its served to.
I occasionally make the Talmadge Farm sauce from Camille Glenn’s Heritage of Southern Cooking…that one has Worcestershire, but it’s a delicious sauce. (Like give serious thought to drinking it with a straw good. Lol)
You would have loved Arthur Bryant’s back in the day.
The sauce was in 5 gallon glass jugs cured for a long while in the storefront windows.
A wicked brew.
I’d have like to see it and would have tried it, but I’d like to know the pH was low enough to ferment at room temperature. grin
After my success with Branston pickle last year (I think last year - might have been the year before) I’m tempted to take on homemade Worcestershire sauce as a winter project. I rather like this approach https://practicalselfreliance.com/homemade-worcestershire-sauce/ although I’ll use a knife and a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor.
I like the fermenting part. It appeals to me. It also gives me a couple of months to sit on the couch and when asked “what are you doing?” I can honestly answer “making Worcestershire sauce.”
I can then merge the Worcesestershire sauce into my BBQ sauce.
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Here is the definitive guide to the best barbecue sauces, some of which you can have shipped. plus links to easy bbq sauce recipes, and a scientific analysis of what barbecue sauce needs – https://johntannersbbqblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/the-best-barbecue-sauces/
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That’s a rather lofty assertion, especially considering your audience here.
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Well, it’s based on a decades of eating barbecue in many hundreds – thousands actually – of places all over the US – and beyond. (There’s actually a real good place in Amsterdam.) And check out the science link.
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Probably a good selection of sauces for some people, but I do not like barbecue sauces that are vinegar heavy on anything (regardless of the “science”.) I may be an abberation. Even as a child I had a strong aversion to vinegar–so much so that my older brother and sister would torture me with it. LOL Oddly enough, mustard (which has a lot of vinegar in it) was never a problem for me.
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To each his own. The sourness – vinegar, mustard, lemon – does bring out/balance the flavor of smoked pork in particular. Sweet sauces tend to smother it, to the extent that beef and pork can de undistinguishable – but then I am certainly an outlier in generally disliking sweet flavors in savory dishes.
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And to be fair, most people on this thread (including me) are mentioning ubiquitous commercial sauces rather than the sort that you’d expect with real-deal, regulation barbecue. In my book, those are two different enjoyable things that go by the same name. So there’s that.
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