In the spring of 2012, we planted what seemed like 4,000\ntomato plants in our garden, figuring that would be enough for a bunch of\ntomato juice for canning. After jarring\nwhat we needed for the year we still had a bunch of tomatoes left\u2026\u2026so what to\ndo?? We settled on what any reasonable\nperson would use them for, BBQ sauce!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 2012 we were cooking a few catering events per year and\nmost of those events were whole pigs. \nSince most people like to sauce their pulled pork, we decided to create\nour own signature flavor. We wanted something sure to be a little different and\nunique. What we ended up with was a\nthin, vinegar based, spicy BBQ sauce. This sauce was good, but may have been a\nlittle too hot for some people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 2012 we started making our BBQ sauces several times\nthrough the year as our tomatoes ripened. \nAlong the way we took notes about the recipe, cook times, flavors,\nyield, consumer feedback and basically anything that we felt was\nimportant. I kept all my notes in my red\nspiral notebook, also known as my \u201cBBQ Bible\u201d. \nWe tracked these recipes by a numbering system, it was our way of having\na lot number. We would write the year and\nthe run number on the lids. So, the first\nrun of 2012 would end up with the lid numbered 121. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 2014 we started to zero in on a recipe that we really\nenjoyed. By the second run of the year we had a keeper in \u201c142\u201d. After catering the rest of the year with it,\nwe had a few people comment that it was a little too spicy for their\ntaste. I was discouraged but welcomed\nthe criticism. So, in 2015 we went back\nto the drawing board and created sauces 151, 152, and 153. These were more tomato flavored with less\nvinegar and pepper flavor. These sauces\nwere more center-of-the-road flavored but were still distinctly ours. Over the next few years this would become our\nhouse BBQ sauce, although I personally never really \u201cloved\u201d it. The sauce was still different from what you\ncould buy at the store and our customers liked it. We didn\u2019t hear any\ncomplaints about it being too hot, but I always wished we could go back to the 142\nrecipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2016 and 2017 we made our catering BBQ (about 50 gallons\nper year) to the 152 recipe but continued trying new recipes in small\nbatches. One of these recipes was a\nsweet chili-based BBQ sauce. I only made\nabout 20 quarts on a whim and handed them out to my friends to try. The only requirement for using the sauce is\nthat they gave me feedback. Good or bad, I needed to hear it all. One such\nfriend was Danny Thomas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the fall of 2017, Danny qualified for the 2017 Jack\nDaniel\u2019s Invitational with his own accolades in competition cooking. He thought enough of our BBQ to suggest he take\none down and enter it for his team in the sauce category. The sauce he ended up taking was the sweet\nchili version from earlier in the year. \nAfter the dust settled, we ended up 33rd<\/sup> out of 76 sauces\nentered that year\u2026..pretty good for our first crack at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, last year happened\u2026..<\/p>\n\n\n\n After earning another invite for \u201cThe Jack\u201d in 2018, Danny again\noffered to take a sauce down to be entered. \nReally wanting to beat 33rd<\/sup> and with some quality feedback we\ndecided to start over on our BBQ. I\nchecked my notes from every single batch of BBQ we had ever made and opened my\ntrusty red bible up to a new blank page. I wrote down a new recipe that I thought would\nbe a good starting point. Later that\nweekend we started on the batch, lo and behold, 181 was created. After a day of stirring, adding a little of\nthis and a little of that, we had a sauce that tasted different from anything\nwe had ever made. With high hopes, we made\n50 gallons of the sauce in that batch. The plan was that we would use it for\nthe upcoming catering season, praying everyone else liked it as much as we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks later, Danny took the sauce with him to\nLynchburg and entered it. Judging was on\nSaturday October 27th<\/sup> 2018, and we were catering for a wedding. I was nervous all day waiting for a text or\ncall from the guys. Finally, just after\nwe got the main course off at the wedding, my phone rang. Another close friend of mine that traveled\nwith Danny was calling. I answered with \u201cHello\u201d\nto which I was greeted with \u201cyou just won the Jack Daniels for sauce!\u201d To be honest I didn\u2019t believe Randy because\nthese guys (and myself) are always messing around and are generally highly sarcastic\nto each other. I made him take a picture\nand send it to me. Then I asked for another picture, and then one more, and\nthen it sunk in, we really did win. We beat out 90 other entries with a perfect\nscore of 180. Needless to say, I wasn\u2019t much help to the catering crew for the\nrest of the night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the next few months we toyed with the idea of making and\nmarketing the sauce locally. There was a\nlot of soul searching and second guessing, but in March of 2019 I decided to\ngamble on myself, invest heavily in our company, and push this whole thing\nforward. With that gamble, 181 was sent\nto production, and taken to market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the spring of 2012, we planted what seemed like 4,000 tomato plants in our garden, figuring that would be enough for a bunch of tomato juice for canning. After jarring what we needed for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbq-sauce"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/99159502_10207691109192616_5850693090146254848_o.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utzworks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}