Barbecue Sauce and Politics

Jody asked for my barbecue sauce recipe.
It really is tasty stuff.

After you make it a time or two, you'll be able to adjust the recipe to your personal tastes.
It's NOT good until it's cooked, either in a sauce pan over low heat for about 45 minutes or brushed on to chicken/pork/mystery meat for the last half hour to 45 minutes of cooking. It's really good on chicken thighs or drumsticks. Cook your chicken then add a layer of sauce for the last 45 minutes or so.

The recipe has some room for tweaking, and the measurements aren't exact, because, well, that's how I cook. Most of the time the results are good.

:)

3 cups ketchup*
1/2 to 3/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 TBS worcestershire sauce
3 TBS liquid smoke (not liquid smoke marinade... that stuff is NASTY)
3/4 to 1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cups mustard (I use a stone ground horseradish type, Plochman's. It's seriously the best one I've tried for the sauce, but I wouldn't ask my dog to eat it out of the jar. Eww.) (not that I allow my dog to eat stuff from jars) (and not that she likes mustard.) And you know what pisses me off? Our regular grocery store stocks like 14 kinds of mustard, but I have to go to Winco to buy Plochman's. What the hell is up with that???

Oh yeah. I was trying to post a recipe.

Now add:
1 tsp or more garlic powder... depends on your taste
1/2 tsp or more black pepper

Mix it all up and cook it or use it or store it in the refrigerator uncooked. I've kept it for more than a month in the fridge with no problem. I suppose it would eventually spoil, but if all the products you use are recently manufactured, it should be fine long after you've used it all up. :)

Tastes great mixed in with a can of plain baked beans and a bit of sauteed onion and cooked in the crock or on the stove or in the oven until done.

It's good poured over a 3 to 4 lb chuck roast in the crock pot. Cook on low heat all day long. Remove roast from crock and shred with forks, (toss the fat into the trash can... ptui!!) then return meat to crock and mix.
Serve over toasted sandwich rolls.

*I totally refuse to buy Heinz ketchup. When John Kerry was trying to become the president, I caught the tail end of a television interview with his wife. She was asked about the Heinz family fortune, and airily dismissed it. She said that her share was such a tiny percentage that it really made no difference to her.

As I recall it was slightly more than 1% of the total Heinz income.

This was during the time that Multnomah county had the 'I-tax'. Yes. A county tax on top of the Federal taxes, the state taxes, all the utility taxes and gas taxes and road taxes and fees and licenses and why, while I'm sitting here typing and thinking about taxes do I suddenly feel an almost irresistable urge to bend over?

The I-tax took 1.25% of our yearly income 'for the children' and pissed it away on schools... evidently their then $7,000 per year per pupil spending wasn't enough.
Aaargh.
It cost my family more money than we could really afford, and was a great financial hardship for us. To us, based on our small income, it was a LOT of money. We struggled to pay it off for each of the three years it was extorted from us.

To the heiress of a percentage of a multi billion dollar fortune, 1% was 'nothing'.

I could take her 'nothing' and support my entire family on it. It was just another demonstration of how out of touch politicians are, but it has stuck with me, and I've avoided buying Heinz products ever since.

It's petty, but it's me.
:)

And all Jody wanted was a recipe.
Ha.