Whenever I go to judge various KCBS competitions, I like to also go around and check out the various vendors and booths that are set up as well. Back in October during the KCBS competition in Waxhaw, NC (read a review of it here), one of the vendors I came across was a local BBQ sauce maker -- Seth Land of Southern Staple Foods. Lucky for me, he was handing out samples of his sauce. One taste, and I knew that this sauce was good stuff. We chatted for a while, and he was kind enough to give me a bottle of his sauce to review. So I present to you Proud Piggy BBQ Sauce!
I asked Seth about how his sauce came to be. For Seth, it started with growing up around weekend cookouts and the smell of hickory. As he got older, he found that most Eastern Carolina sauces he came across were either too vinegary or nothing but vinegar and red pepper. Three years of tinkering and tweaking have resulted in Proud Piggy BBQ Sauce -- a sauce that Seth claims has full throttle flavor that creates a party on your tongue.
The sauce is made, blended, and bottled local to Charlotte, NC in Waxhaw, NC. So for those of you who are looking to buy products local to North Carolina, this could be one on your list. So how does it taste? Let's find out...
Naked Observations
The sauce has a nice dark red color to it. Looking at it close up, you can see the various spices that are contained throughout the sauce. Like a lot of vinegar-based sauces, give it a good shake if the bottle has set for a while. The smell test gives off the sense of a tangy flavor, but not a straight vinegar flavor. A taste test confirmed this. The tangy flavor held true to the standards of Eastern Carolina sauces, but there was more there than just vinegar and red pepper. The other spices blended in nicely with this.
To the Meat of the Matter
Pork. Yes, more pork. What else goes better with an Eastern Carolina style sauce than pork? I had one last helping of pulled pork from my cook using Socks' Love Rub for lunch at work one afternoon. It was a perfect time to try the sauce out.
You can see that the sauce does not sit on top of the meat but rather blends into the meat. The spices rest on top of the meat. The sauce gave the meat a great tang that was not one-dimensional at all. A most excellent Eastern Carolina BBQ sauce!
If you are interested in purchasing this sauce, you can do so at http://www.southernstaplefoods.com. On their site is a link to an online store where their sauce is for sale as well as some of their rubs.
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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