Jack's Bar-B-Q Sauce Recipe

Hello everyone!

I have been as busy as a Downey woodpecker on an oak tree trying to get my cooker ready to travel, because I will be gone most of April. I am a certified judge for Kansas City Bar-B-Q society and the Memphis Bar-B-Q Network. I will be in Jackson, GA on April 3rd & 4th, cooking in Maynardville , TN on the 10th & 11th, Salisbury, MD on the 17th & 18th and Southaven , MS on the 24th & 25th. Then I’m on to Mountain Home, AR on May 1 & 2, Pulaski, TN on the 8th & 9th and cooking in Servile, TN on the 15th & 16th. Then I get 2 weekends off!
Here is a really good and easy BBQ sauce recipe that my brother used for years. He would not tell it to anyone. Then out of the clear blue sky, he said here I am giving you my sauce recipe. You could have knocked me over with a feather. When I read it, I told him that I should have known that it was easy if he could make it. I got his permission to let it out. So hear ‘tis.

1 Cup apple cider vinegar
1 Cup Catsup
1/2 Cup Sorghum molasses
1/2 Cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons garlic salt
1 Tablespoon Bell pepper
The recipe calls for 2 Tablespoons of hot red pepper flakes

This is Jack’s recipe down to here. And after that it’s mine.

But I think it makes it too HOT, so I leave out the hot pepper.

I add:
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon of dry mustard

Throw it all in a sauce pan and bring to a boil then turn down and let it simmer for 20 minutes. STIR, STIR, STIR! Don’t let it burn. A double boiler would be great!!

Intro

Welcome to my blog built to feature my newest adventure and all that goes with it, competition bar-b-q'ing! Here is where you'll find lots of updates and information, as well as a few recipes and pictures, that are solely about my long-lived hobby of bar-b-q'ing.

Stay tuned for pictures of the Competition Bar-B-Q Pit I'm building!

But before that -- Here's a little something I wrote up to introduce myself --

I am David (Dave) Franks, Author, Pit Master and Flunky!!!

This is my first time at bloggin’. For all of you that have been getting our newsletter, a lot of this will be sour grapes. But the new ones might get something out of it. I was born in Whitehaven, Tennessee. That is now part of Memphis. I went to Whitehaven School; the grammar and high schools were all together. My Grandmother was the first teacher hired there. My Grandfather was the first doctor there, and my great uncle was the first dentist. I started cooking (helping) when I was 4 or 5. The biggest thing that I did was bring in the wood, keep the fire going, and the stirring. We raised, canned, dried and cured a lot of meat by using sugar, salt, red pepper, black pepper and smoking. We would sit around the fire and listen to the battery radio and shell corn to take to the grist mill the next day on the back of our mule to make meal. We would take butter and eggs to the country store and they would credit us for them. Then, when we needed some things, they would debit our account.

When I was growing up, there were only three Bar-B-Q joints in the Memphis area that I can remember. The one in Memphis is where I got my eating sauce recipe from, the one down at Bullfrog Corner, Mississippi is where my basting sauce recipe came from. I learned how to Bar-B-Q at J.C. Harbin's while working for him because he was our sponsor for the Doc Hollom River race. We would swim 5 or 10 miles down the Mississippi river. As most of you know, I have a cookbook out, Foods of the Southland, with over 250 good Southern recipes.

We are putting our Lil' Red Barn Bar-B-Q sauce on the market real soon. We plan on getting into competitive Bar-B-Q’ing next year. I am building a new pair of smokers that are trailer mounted and enclosed in a Lil' Red Barn.