Product Review – Stubb’s Smokey Mesquite BBQ sauce

As promised, here is a product review for one of the Stubb’s bar-b-q sauces (hey, that’s how they spell it on their bottle!).
A quick note: If you are gluten free and are going to seek Stubb’s products, make sure you double check the ingredients. They reformulated all their flavors to be gluten free back in July, but some places are still working through back stock. Read here and here to get the full back story on why I’m writing this post.

We decided to start with the Smokey Mesquite flavor since that is the one that had gluten in it the last time we tried it. The ingredients are pretty much in line with how we eat (in this case, no high fructose corn syrup and no gluten): water, tomato paste, sugar, molasses, brown sugar, distilled vinegar, salt, honey, natural mesquite smoke flavor, corn starch, spices, contains less than 0.5% of: onion, garlic, caramel color, guar gum, xanthan gum, corn syrup, tamarind, natural flavor.

The flavor is pretty much in line with how I like my BBQ sauces. It’s lightly sweet without being overpowering. There’s a touch of sour, but only a touch. I can’t stand sour BBQ sauces. And then there’s the depth of flavor. I can taste a number of different tastes, but none of them overpower anything else. Lightly tomato-y, hint of garlic, a slight smokey flavor. There’s also a slight zing to the sauce. Not spicy in a painful sort of way, but one that lets your tongue know it’s there.

We’re using the sauce to make ribs today. First the ribs get slathered in a spice rub the ManBeast likes working with. They get put under the broiler for a few minutes, and then put into the crock pot with a chopped up onion and the entire bottle of BBQ sauce. After about five hours on high, we should have tasty fall apart ribs for our dinner. And a wonderful smell infusing our apartment.