Hot Sauces #248 – 251 – South Central Kentucky Road Trip Nets 4 New Hot Sauces
For the past 4 years I have taken a different route each year from my home in the ‘Ville down to our family reunion in Middleton, KY. This year’s new route gained me 4 new hot sauces along the way.
Each year that I choose to take a new route has caused me to have to go further and further from a straight line. My path this year took me down long winding 2-lane roads through the small Kentucky towns of Bardstown, Springfield, Lebanon, Campbellsville and Greensburg. Along the way I added 2 new hot sauces to my total.
An early Friday morning trek to Tomkpkinsville for a deep-fried hamburger and some Morgan County-style BBQ added a 3rd and a stop in Bowling Green for more BBQ on the way home added a 4th.
Cajun Chef Green Hot Sauce
The first new sauce I tried was on the table at Brother’s BBQ in Campbellsville, KY.
I was really looking forward to trying this place since I had read so many good things about it online. Unfortunately, the BBQ I had was mediocre. The hot sauce may or may not have been good, but since it was so totally inappropriate for BBQ, good or bad, I really have no idea.
This whole place was sadly disappointing. I should have eaten at the “World’s Last Druther’s” down the street.
- Hot Sauce #248 – Cajun Chef Green Hot Sauce
Jake and Amos Hot Sauce
I found my second new sauce at an Amish store on the road between Campbellsville and Greensburg. This was no little roadside stand. It was a large, new looking building with 100’s of corporate packaged “Amish-Style” and “Amish-Inspired” products with Amish sounding names, like Yoder’s, Samuel’s and Isaac’s and checkout girls wearing bonnets and makeup.
Not exactly what I was hoping for – but I did see Jake and Amos Hot Sauce. It, too, is obviously corporate-made. But since it was only $2.69 – and I had never had it – I picked up a bottle along with a can of Ski.
The sauce is a cheap Louisiana-style sauce that tastes like all cheap Louisiana-style sauces. The Ski soda was better.
- Hot Sauce #249 – Jake and Amos Hot Sauce
Backyard BBQ Hot Sauce
My Friday morning trip to Tompkinsville yeilded a much better hot sauce and, thankfully, much better BBQ, too.
The Monroe County-Style BBQ that was invented in Tompkinsville, isn’t served with traditional BBQ sauce. Instead each restaurant makes a hot sauce from the meat drippings, a ton of butter (!) and their own unique blend of hot peppers and spices. You dip the meat, a grilled pork shoulder plate, into the sauce.
Since each restaurant has it’s own hot sauce recipe, any new Monroe County-Style BBQ joint I visit = a new hot sauce. Sweet!
At Backyard BBQ, I asked for the hottest sauce they had and the woman behind the counter asked me if I had been there before. When I said no, she told me I would get the medium. I said okay. I learned long ago not to argue with Southern women.
The sauce tasted exactly as you would expect a sauce made of pork fat, butter and dried pepper powder to taste – that is to say, spectacular.
I could have handled the hot, though.
- Hot Sauce #250 – Backyard BBQ Hot Sauce
Smoky Pig BBQ Hot Sauce
I enjoyed my first Monroe County-Style BBQ experience so much that I decided to stop on the way home from the reunion on Sunday and let my girlfriend try some. (She couldn’t come down until Friday night, so she missed my trip to Tompkinsville.)
On the web I found out there is a highly-regarded joint in Bowling Green that cooks and serves it, Smoky Pig BBQ. And it is less that a mile off of I-65 on the Old Louisville Road at the Corvette Plant exit. We stopped. I got the hottest sauce this time. She got the mild. And we both loved it.
I have a feeling we will be making Smoky Pig a regular stop on our trips to and through South-Central Kentucky.
- Hot Sauce #251 – Smoky Pig BBQ Hot Sauce
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