Three Little Pigs Huff and Puff Competition BBQ Sauce (5/5)

Three Little Pigs Huff and Puff Competition BBQ Sauce (5/5)

5 Stars. I loved this sauce. Loved the packaging, the name, the taste, the brick house displayed on the bottle – just a really nice concept based on a great fairytale. The original fairytale is a little more gruesome than you might think, involving the death of the first two pigs, and the death of the wolf in the end…

Mother Pig sends her three little piglets out into the world to make the strongest house for the family but they get into a fight so they all make three different houses. The first little pig builds a house of straw, but a wolf blows it down and eats the pig. The encounter between wolf and pig features ringing proverbial phrases:

One day the big bad wolf came and knocked on the first little pig’s door and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.” And the little pig answered, “No, no, I won’t let you come in, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.” “Well,” said the wolf, “then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.” So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down and ate the first pig.

The second pig builds a house of sticks, has the same conversation with the wolf, and the wolf eats the second pig.

The third pig builds a house of brick. The wolf cannot huff and puff hard enough to blow the house down. He attempts to trick the third little pig out of his house, but the pig outsmarts him at every turn. Finally, the wolf threatens to come down the chimney, whereupon the third little pig boils a pot of water into which the wolf plunges, and the third pig eats the wolf.

Well enough story telling – this little pig wolfed down some nice BBQ in order to get this review done. So, as we say here in Boston, on with it!

Smell/Aroma

My favorite sauces smell natural to the point that I can picture the ingredients combining into one. Until I made my own sauce, I really had no idea how the flavors came together, so if you are itching to get serious about really tasting your sauce, I’d urge you to make your own – at least once. The sweet-tomato smell was dominant, following by molasses, vinegar, garlic, and Worcestershire. Maybe a touch too much vinegar for the initial sniff, but not enough to get turned off.

Before Cooking Flavor

This was really nice and I was so inspired by the uncooked flavor of this sauce that I tried a few neat new BBQ-based recipes. A prime-rib sandwich with Three Little Pigs Mayo, lettuce, tomato, and Chipotle Cheddar cheese on wheat. Nice. Added some to baked beans (normally a summer food for me, but what the hell). Excellent. Made a BBQ Burger topped with cheddar and this stuff. Awesome.

Consistency

If you were a fellow taster you might ask, “how did it respond?” And I’d chuckle for a few, thinking about how silly it is to discuss the response of BBQ sauce, then I’d drop the smile, and with a total serious face I’d say, “The response was good, Will, really damn good.” That means it moved around the jar in a natural fashion. When I tipped the jar it took a little while for the sides to get painted. It didn’t slosh around like water, nor did it sit there, like a gooey blob filled with some many chemicals that you’d feel like sludge moments after eating it. Good natural “signs of life” in the sauce, specks and flakes, hence the sauce clung to the meat nicely.

Tangent: I’m hearing the young kids on the net are now saying “Noice” in their IM conversations.

As in …

IMer A: hey
IMer B: hey
IMer A: I just had 3 lil pigs BBQ sauce
IMer B: ROTFL!!! (rolling on the floor laughing)
IMer A: It was noice
IMer B: sick
IMer A: L8r (this signals End of conversation).

Is this the end of the world as we know it?  As long as I have my fix of BBQ Sauce, I feel fine.

After Cooking Flavor

Well, Huff and Puff certainly retained the flavor well after some time on the grill. My usual taste testing meat product (chicken) carried the sample well (I did drumsticks – some with skin, some without skin). Once thing I couldn’t taste before the cooking was the heat. I noticed the Cayenne Mash got turned on during the cooking to add a little mystery heat aftertaste. Nice little bit o spice aftertaste.

Ingredients

Ketchup, Molasses, Sugar, Water, Cayenne Mash, Garlic, White Vinegar, Dark Brown Sugar, Smoke Flavoring, Worcestershire Sauce. By calling out use of ketchup and not it’s base ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sweetener) they have found a creative way to add HFCS (high fructose corn syrup, the wonder ingredient sometimes blamed for the fattening of America) without clearly placing it on the label. Slick move, but we are on to you, piggies. This one was the closest call in terms of a possible mark against this sauce, but it was well balanced in all other areas.

Nutrition

Calories 60
Total Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0g
Sodium 260mg
Carbs 14g
Protein 1g

Marketing and Packaging

Great packaging, theme, fairy tale, taste, consistency, “response,” graphics… They win a lot of contests, so the only thing I’d recommend is to place a few of their awards right on front of the label (instead they are listed on the side – noice but not what people will see first).

Site Editor, BBQ Sauce Lover, Family Guy, Hi Tech Marketer by Day. He recently wrote the Ebook “How to Market Your BBQ Sauce” which can be purchased on this site.

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Comments

  1. Im surprised they did not have to break the ketchup ingredients down. I was told its a gov requirement.I know i had to on my sauce Maybe it varies state to state

  2. Is 3 little pigs gluten free? It doesn’t say so on the label, but it calls out anchovies as an allergen ingredient and not wheat or gluten. the ingredients Natural flavors and Caramel color can be gluten, but alot of the time not….I would love to be able to eat this sauce! Thanks

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