Texas-Style Barbecue Sauce, on meatloaf
Comfort Classics is a new feature for our challenging times. We’ll revisit some recipes that have appeared on Burnt My Fingers for easy, reassuring dishes, sides and sauces you can make at home without stress and with ingredients you are likely to find in your grocery store if not your pantry. And what better way to begin than Texas-style barbecue sauce? In Texas you would never eat this on a freshly smoked brisket (Tabasco only, please!) but it’s fine for leftovers in a sandwich and you can use it on all kinds of other meats, such as the meatloaf we tried today and of course hamburgers or hot dogs.
We were trying to replicate the sauce served at Sonny Bryan’s, a joint on Inwood that we grew up with. They make their own sauce and will sell it to you in a jar at the counter; they also made, or sold under their name, a commercial product with a different formula. The latter is not what you want and it’s apparently no longer available. The original sauce had a good sweet-sour balance and a nice smokiness from the cumin. That’s what we are going for here. Check out our Texas-Style Barbecue Sauce and we think you’ll like it.
What other comfort classics have you enjoyed on Burnt My Fingers over the years? Let us know (in the comments or by email) and, if there’s enough interest, we’ll dust them off and take them out for a spin.
P.S. Here is an “original” recipe for Sonny Bryan’s sauce which apparently appeared in Dallas newspapers in the 80s. I like the idea it includes a whole lemon, something I’ve never found a trace of in any jar of Sonny’s sauce. The amount of Worcestershire scares me and makes me think the results might be inedible, but give it a try if you are so inclined.
