The Legend of the Secret Sauce

Hello, hungry people…

It’s the Fourth of July, a day for family barbecues. Which can’t exist without barbecue sauce, preferably homemade.

Behind every great family BBQ sauce there’s a story.

Here’s ours:

It begins in Morrilton, Arkansas. My father in law, Bob Hardwick, worked at the Ford dealership there. This was in the 1960s.

Every now and then, Bob and one of the guys who worked with him, Bud Mobley, would eat lunch at a nearby BBQ joint.

The name of the place has been lost to the ages. Bud Mobley had been eating there since forever and was good friends with the guy who owned it and who cooked everything. A Black guy. Here’s the kind of operation it was: White people had to go to the back door to get served.

“That’s my favorite part of the story,” says Debbie, my lovely wife.

***

The sauce at this place was the stuff of legend. Anything you put it on—pork, chicken, beef, an asbestos shingle—was immediately elevated from merely great to godly. The ‘cue itself was memorable; the sauce made it unforgettable. Folks were always asking the owner what was in it. But he never gave up that information.

One day, my father in law and Bud Mobley showed up for lunch only to find that the owner had died. But his daughter was there. She handed Bud an envelope. It contained the recipe for the sauce.

“He wanted you to have this. But under one condition,” she said. “You can only share it with one other person before you die.”

***

Here’s where the story gets a little fuzzy.

We take it as truth, but it might have gotten embellished a bit.

Apparently word got out that Bob Mobley possessed the recipe for the secret sauce. And Kraft, the giant food company, got in touch.

“They offered him a lot of money for the recipe,” says Debbie. “He could have used it, but he said no.”

When it came time for Bud Mobley to pass along the recipe, he gave it to my father in law. Again, there were conditions. My father in law could pass it along to only one other person.

And that’s how my wife wound up with it.

***

Once a year, usually on some hallowed occasion, like her late father’s birthday, Debbie will make a big batch of sauce.

It’s an all-day production. She makes a lot of sauce. Gallons of it. Our house smells of sauce for days afterward. It is not a bad thing.

Debbie gives the sauce to select friends and family. And by select, I mean people who will follow the rules about how to use it. Here are the rules:

— Don’t apply the sauce until the meat is done cooking. It’s a finishing sauce.

— And don’t you dare use too much of it at a time. It’s meant to be brushed on sparingly, not poured on or dipped into or drenched over everything. That is sacrilege.

Break the rules and the sauce is lost to you forever.

And that’s a tragic thing.

***

Of course, Debbie does make allowances for certain people who are true devotees of the sauce.

Like our friend, Jeffrey Cardenas who lives in Key West. Debbie sends Jeffrey a bottle of sauce every year around Christmastime. And upon opening the package, Jeffrey immediately pours himself a shot of sauce and sips on it, as if it were a fine whiskey.

But other folks she will not indulge. We had a friend who owned several BBQ restaurants around town. He tasted the sauce and said something about how he’d maybe like to serve it at his restaurants. He asked for the recipe. Debbie wouldn’t give it to him. So he asked for a bottle of sauce to take home. Debbie wouldn’t give that to him either.

“I know he’ll send it off to some lab and try to figure out the recipe,” said Debbie. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

***

The recipe is written down on a notecard and like all treasured recipes it bears the stains of time.

I’d take a photo and show it to you, but here’s the thing: Debbie keeps it hidden. I have no idea where it is. She has made a copy of it, but she has not put it in a file on her computer.

“What if someone got into my computer and found the recipe?” she says.

A recipe like that, you gotta keep it analog. Russian hackers will never have it.

***

I’ve only seen the notecard once, years ago, when Debbie accidently left it on the kitchen counter after making a batch of sauce. I picked up the notecard and had maybe three seconds to study it before Debbie caught me and snatched it away.

“No way,” she said. “It’s supposed to stay a secret.”

All I know is that, despite being a reddish sauce, there’s nothing tomatoey in it. There is, however, a lot of vinegar. And based on the three seconds I spent with the notecard, at least a dozen other ingredients. Mostly spices. Beyond that? Beats me.

We have two sons. Like anyone else who has ever tasted the sauce, they love it. As for which one of them gets the recipe, it’s one of those Solomonlike decisions. I’m guessing Debbie will bend the rules just a little and give it to both of them.

In the meantime, the secret remains with her.

We will enjoy the sauce today on slabs of spareribs. We will brush the sauce on sparingly. It will be delicious. Few others will ever know just how delicious.

Eat your heart out.