Barbecue Sauce - Luling City Market
sittymkt.JPG (130.64 KiB) Viewed 304 times
A "low church" of sorts, City Market in Luling, TX is often overlooked for the joints just a few miles north in Lockhart. Kreuz, Smitty's, Black's...good pit meat for sure, but City Market has 2 things they do better than most - wet sausage, and sauce.
For the moment, forget about the wet sausage. It will have its day in the sun, but the real reason I am writing all this is to tell y'all about their beautiful, mustard-y, peppery sauce.
Unlike Kansas City, Memphis, the Carolinas, and a shitpile of other places around the states, most of the central TX barbecue purveyors forego sauce. If you ask for sauce at Louie Mueller's in Taylor, TX, the nice fella at the pit scowls at you, and the nice lady tottin' up your order nervously puts some grill drippings in a cup and charges you a buck for 'em. "Good barbecue doesn't need sauce!" is the refrain from most of the well-respected Texas Pitmasters, and for the most part, they are pretty spot-on. In a different setting, asking for an adjunct to alter the flavors of the offering a chef has toiled hours and decades on perfecting would probably be met with scorn and derision as well, so why not for 'cue?
sittycue.JPG (82.46 KiB) Viewed 304 times
But for some folks, barbecue sauce is the yin to the meat's yang, the sunshine to its moonglow, the...well, you get the picture. I'm one of those folks, and while drippins are a passable substitue (as long as the 'cue is good), I am a firm believer in the synergistic powers of a well-wrought barbecue sauce.
So.
Without further ado - the closest I can get to City Market Sauce.
Y'all gonna need-
one 8oz can of tomato paste - you can also use ketchup (makes it a skosh sweeter and tart-er) or puree fresh tomatoes (sorta fucks with the acid level and introduces a bit too much "hoity-toity" to the sauce).
1/4 cup yella mustard (french's or heinz - keep it low-brow, y'all).
1/4 cup brown sugar, keep an exta tbsp of it handy in case it's too tart.
3-4 tbsp Louisiana hot sauce (Cajun Chef is the benchmark for this recipe, Crystal and Frank's work as well).
1 tbsp white vinegar
2-3 tsp coarse black pepper (I lean to the 3 tsp side).
Directions:
Throw all that shit in a bowl and whisk the fuck outta it. After it is combined, let it set a spell and marry up, then put it on whatever you might put in yer mouth.
sittysaws.jpeg (94.85 KiB) Viewed 304 times