Not too long ago, my sister Julie and her husband Kevin brought me back a great sauce from a recent trip to Austin. They lived there for awhile and told me some of the cool things to do and have always had a sense of the local scene where ever they happened to live - whether it’s Austin, Boston, or Philly. Anyway, this sauce has turned out to be one of my … no actually my all-time favorite mustard based BBQ sauce I’ve ever had.
Instead of simply mixing ketchup and mustard or tomato sauce and mustard, they went about things “Texas style” by going big or not going at all. The thick rich flavor of this stuff is really great and not overpowering at all, so if you are going to try this BBQ sauce, you better go big or not at all, because if you don’t have enough stuff cooked up, you just might regret it later.
Why “The Salt Lick?” A little history…
Taken from vendor website:
Thirty years ago, Thurman Roberts, Sr. and his wife Hisako T. Roberts started the Salt Lick Restaurant on the ranch where he was born. The stones of the building were quarried from that same ranch. Everything was done by them with their own hands; building and cooking with care and love, a pride in quality, and a job done right.
Family reunions provided them the opportunity to gather and share family BBQ recipes that had been handed down from generation to generation since the Civil War. Their meals were such a success; friends encouraged them to start their own restaurant. Opened for business in 1969, the Salt Lick has become world-renowned.
Since then, the Salt Lick has grown in size and scope. The restaurant facilities have been expanded. Rooms have been added to accommodate various functions. The Pavilion has been added just down the road so that many couples have started their married lives together with us. When the City of Austin built its new Austin Bergstrom International Airport, The Salt Lick was one of the few restaurants picked to represent what Austin dining is to the rest of the world.
Smell/Aroma
A nice natural sweet mustard smell with a hint of mystery. I’d almost describe it as Drunken Mustard… there’s something mildly intoxicating about the combination of these fine flavors.
Consistency
Excellent movement in the bottle. If this sauce was a beer, it would be a Guinness. If it were a salsa it would be the chunky stuff. The warning on the label says it all -
SHAKE WELL BEFORE EACH USE.
SEPARATION IS NORMAL.
This isn’t overstated, it’s simply fact that there’s enough salts and spices and specks floating around in the bottle to figure you are tasting something good, and real. It clings to the meat well, and in the case of my chicken and pork chops, it really did the trick clinging to the poultry and the pig.
Before Cooking Flavor
I dipped in a finger and pulled out a winner and it was more finger-licking good than anything that cheesy fried chicken chain could offer (although I do enjoy the KFC potato wedges). Mustardy sweet, with strong garlic/onion tinge and with enough Worcestershire to make for something a bit more complex. Worcestershire with its usually present helping of anchovies, effectively offlimits my wife, who’s been a vegetarian for about 15 years straight. Sometimes she tastes with me, but usually not.
After Cooking Flavor
Nicely retains flavor through the cooking process. In order to not waste too much I always recommend waiting until the tail 20% or so of the cooking, then submerge whatever you can find into this heavenly mixture. Sidenote - I find that mustard based sauces don’t “transform” like tomato-based sauces on the grill because of the heated tomato/sugar effect - which sometimes offers a somewhat new (caramelized?) flavor.
Ingredients
I’ll always considered subtracting points for including bad stuff and offered extra points for really good choices. But if this were a weighted-variable equation, taste and expectation of taste have always been ranked first on the list and the nutrition aspects have been dead last but it’s always worth mentioning. In the case of Salt Lick, they’ve got a nice simple list of ingredients, which is always nice.
Soybean Oil, Cane Sugar, Distilled Vinegar, Prepared Mustard (various sub ingredients), Worcestershire Sauce (various sub inggreidents), Salt, Spices, Xanthum Gum.
The only thing I will mention is that mustard based sauces - especially this one with a hefty helping of soybean oil - tend to be higher in fat than their traditional tomato-based friends. But sauces are supposed to be flavorful and tasty, right? Right. “Diet sauces” are stupid - an oxymoron if you will, but I strongly believe that smart, high quality ingredient choices are always a great idea and will pay in the long run unless you are producing a million bottles of your sauce.
Marketing and Packaging
It’s hard for me to pick on the sauce in this department having not been to Austin or the famous Salt Lick restaurant for which the sauce originated. It’s an insiders sauce and I could find anything particularly egregious or pretentious on the bottle. So it scores big.
Holy Honey Bees Batman! This stuff is different. It’s got some majorly positive qualities going for it - awesome packaging, consistency and high-quality, natural ingredients (avoidance of corn syrups and refined sugar), but the side-effect is a unexpectedly strong honey taste. Once again, natural vs flavor beat each other up in this BBQ Death Match.
The story behind Fork N Halo It all started around 15 years ago when Al Silverman, the founder of the company, turned his love of cooking to the art of making authentic slow smoked BBQ. Cookin’ the ribs, the brisket and the pulled pork was the easy part but… he couldn’t find a bbq sauce that did the meat justice. He knew how he wanted the sauce to taste, but couldn’t find one that he liked. He decided to make his own from scratch. He wanted it to be all natural, fat free, without any corn syrup or refined sugar. Also no artificial additives, flavorings and definitely no MSG! So off he went to the kitchen to create his sauce.
Al’s BBQ sauce soon became very popular with his family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. They were always saying “This bbq sauce is wicked good, can I have the recipe?” or “Hey Al, you ought to sell this sauce!” The idea of starting a company, selling bbq sauce, was the farthest thing from his mind. He was happy just to have folks enjoy his sauce.
But, so many people were asking for it, Al decided that it was time to let the world enjoy the unique flavor of his bbq sauce. So Al, and his wife Darlene, started the “WICKED GOOD BBQ COMPANY” in the fall of 2006. Then after a few recipe enhancements, two additional flavors, and many, many name changes “FORK ‘N HALO” sauces were born.
Well that doesn’t sound like a death match, does it ? On to the review!
The Initial Smell/Aroma
Initial sniff - a fairly traditional sweet, tomato-based sauce.
Sniff again - Mmm is that … honey?? Why yes, yes it is. Molasses, vinegar, and honey all working together on the olfactory senses. At this stage, as Martha Stewart says, it’s a good thing.
Consistency
Like most highly natural sauces, it’s a bit on the thin side. Therefore you’re damned if you do, and you are damned if you don’t (when speaking about the use of all-natural ingredients). It did have a good look and good response/movement in and out of the bottle. Look and feel is BBQ’escue.
Before Cooking Flavor
My thoughts are that I wanted to like this sauce and overlook the taste factor, but it couldn’t happen. Its good, but has a very strong, almost overpowering honey-sweetened flavor. For people who love honey in their tea/coffee, this is could hit the spot for you. But let’s say you like coffee. If you woke up one day and went to your coffee shop (in New England its Dunkin Donuts Country) and asked for a medium regular, you’d get cream and sugar. Now if they started putting Sweet and Low or Equal or honey in there instead (without telling you), you’d be a little surprised*. This is what seemed to happen here. Remember it’s tasty and not a bad sauce at all, its just ‘different’.
* Sidenote. Recently, I think I finally uncovered one of the universes largest secrets!! - the sweetness ratios for Equal, Sweet and Low, and Sugar.
(1) Equal = (2) Sweet and Low = (4) Tablespoons Sugar. In Mathematical Terms, it’s called Hendu’s Theorem.
Can I patent that and make a few $$ so I can stop harrassing BBQ sauce vendors? Probably not. Oh well, back to the review my friends.
After Cooking Flavor
After grillage - I used some chicken wings (skin on) - it still retains the strong honey flavor which was expected. Some of the sweetness mellows out after cooking, which leaves you with a more traditional flavor, but the honey is very strong - almost to the point of novelty.
Taste is really number one as far as the reviews on this site, so I have to dock some points here. Again, this isn’t necessarily bad - the negative part comes from the unexpectedness of the honey BANG.
Another side note to illustrate my point. Growing up in Massachusetts, where cranberries are native and I’m used to driving by the bogs on the way down to summer vacations at Cape Cod, I’m very familiar with a little company called Ocean Spray. A friend of mine had a mother that worked there, and she used to bring home cases of “canning rejects,” which were juices that had the wrong label on them. So you’d crack open a cran-apple, only to start chugging a grapefruit flavored beverage. Weird stuff. But fun back then. My point is that I never saw flavor of those Ocean Spray rejects coming my way, but those were mistakes. In this sauce, I never saw the honey coming at me, when it could/should be taken into consideration in the marketing of the sauce. Stick a BBQ-ing bee on the label, perhaps. Consulting services = free.
Ingredients
Tomatoes, evaporated cane juice, unsulfured molasses, red wine vinegar, pure honey, apple juice concentrate, kosher salt, mustard powder, paprika, black pepper, jalapeno pepper, xanthan gum. Al -Props for using excellent ingredient choices!
Nutrition
Calories 60
Total Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0g
Sodium 420mg
Carbs 15g
Protein 0g
All Natural. Fat free. No MSG. A sauce made with health in mind. Marketing and Packaging
Looks great, professional, glass bottle, wide mouth, cool logo. Memorable and stands out on the shelf. My only suggestion would be in matching the taste with the name. I think this line of products should have the word Honey in big neon letters. Health conscious folks should flock to this!
After a new baby daughter and a hard drive crash, I’m back up and saucing. So first off, thanks to the friendly woman who sent me the free samples of Borderline Gourmet’s Chipotle and Habanero. And aahh… well… you just might not want to read the rest…
Unlike Eric, who was kind in his review over at Home of BBQ, I have no tolerance for bad “sauce.” And yes, borderline is a pretty weird name for a company, considering it’s synonyms are mediocre, so-so, and “pretty good.” I also think of Madonna when I hear the word Borderline - being a child of the 80’s.
Borderline … feels like I’m goin’ to lose my mind
You just keep on pushin’ my love over the borderline
Borderline …
Enough of the material girl - on to the review!
Smell/Aroma
Pungent enough to sear your nose just slightly. One of the most malodorous sauces I’ve had the pleasure of sniffin. A substitute for smelling salts perhaps?
The Taste
What is the opposite of really good. Did someone forget to taste this before it left the test labs? Did this get mixed up with the finished product? Can it really taste this bad? Unfortunately the answer is yes.
The Consistency
First ingredient: water. They should list it as the second and third ingredient too, because it moves around the bottle not like a BBQ sauce, but like a marinade or a juice even. And even though they call it a BBQ sauce and marinade, it doesn’t cut it. You can’t baste with something this thin. Maybe it works for folks who simply pour sauce into a pan along with the meat, but when you’re grillin’ you need something with enough thickness to hang onto the meat. I have a tough time with thin sauces, but it’s not usually the death penalty to those who violate. But this… is a remarkably thin sauce. It pays to know your reviewer. I like sauce the same way I like breasts - thick! Of course I’m talking about chicken…
The Ingredients
I have decided to stop listing each company’s full ingredient list… takes double the review time and adds limited color commentary. Instead I intend to inform you of interesting factoids based on my improving understanding of my BBQ sauce ingredients…
First off, the whole too-much-water thing hurts and hurts bad.. New ingredient for me - Anchovy paste. mmHmm. Indication of a very large processing plant environment (manufactured in a facility that processes dairy, soy, wheat, peanuts, and other tree nuts), which again impacts the review.
Marketing and Packaging
I’ve always thought that gold detailing on black cars was cheesy and it looks even worse on BBQ sauce. The label shows no real sign of care or concern to highlight the unique flavor of this specific sauce. The text is awful - they have a carbon copy block of text which is on both of their sauce brands and really does not describe the two sauces I tasted.
Created with the most selective of palates in mind and the most dedicated grillers to heart, we have taken of an outdoor feast to new heights with our line of Gourmet Specialty Barbecue Sauces and Marinades. Indulge in the delectable essence of garlic and spices, which are sure to please every guest.
I’m sorry, does this sound a little bit overstated? Well, that’s because it is. I would advise those in charge to not crank out sauces to fill out their product line-up, but to carefully release good products less often.
Special guest review!
My dad, Hank, and my mom tried these samples too - the company sent Habanero and Chipotle…
“Mom and I tried the sauces tonight before dinner. We dipped bread into each, trying less hot / spicy sauce first. That was a surprise because that one was real hot - so hot neither of us could really get an idea of the taste. We tried the other one and wow! Too hot for me. That was about all it took to destroy our taste buds, but we tried it again. Mom’s eyes started watering because the spice effects. We weren’t that crazy about it but we brought the less spicy sauce to the dinner table. Trying a bit of it over the rice, it had the same effect. Then we tried it with salmon and it wasn’t that bad. I used it for a few more bites and it was good - but not good enough to use it again.”
So he kinda liked it on his Salmon. Hopefully this is enough to smooth over the overall negativity of my review…
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