Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Let's blow some jars up!

Many have asked..."Hey Rob...are you like actually making these sauces yourself?"

Ummmm...YEP!

With my own two hands in a commercial commissary kitchen in Central Florida. For now, we brew sauce about 3 days a week. In tried and true small business start up fashion, we buy and haul the ingredients we need for each batch to the kitchen each time we brew. We have to be really efficient, really clean, and really smart with the time to keep the overhead as low as possible.

I'll let you know, we had a lot of trial and error before we could even step foot in a commercial kitchen. For example, we had to do some serious tinkering in getting the canning process correct. The canning process is what assures we can send you safe products that have a good shelf life for you and your family without the use of preservatives you find in your store bought varieties of BBQ Sauce. (please do not read the labels in the store bought varieties...unless you want to scared on Halloween..I'd like to know where they grow xantham)

This "learning" process involved quite memorable moments such as...

  • Blowing up jars of sauce in the pressure canner...or

  • Scalding the first and second layers of the skin on my hand "testing" to see if steam was coming out of the canner...or how 'bout this one...

  • Finding out what happens when you try and open a pressure canner before the pressure is 100% released...(I had the bruises to show for it). For all you MEN out there...who needs to read the directions! All in the name of Sauce I tell you!
We fell back to a safer way of finishing off each and every jar of BBQ Sauce from Sweet Life Sauce Company with a simple boiling water bath once all the jars have been hot packed and closed up with lids.

****NOTICE****
I will refer to said "lids" as "closures" in the future to attempt to impress those of you who are impressable that I'm picking up on the sauce industry lingo...kinda like calling toilets water closets in my former industry.

Anyhoo, we are getting awesome products from this canning process. You can enjoy our BBQ sauces without a worry. We even have a microbiology study completed on our sauces that gave us a perfect bill of health.

Enough on canning and on to some other cool stuff. We had a chance to set up shop for the first time at the Sanford Farmers Market this past weekend. WE HAD A BLAST! Other than the fact we melted in the heat, the time out in our community was incredible. We had a chance to meet tons of folks, even sold some sauce. What's really cool...some of our new customers have already sent us rave reviews on our sauces paired with their grilled favorites.
RECIPE ALERT!
If you want to see some entertainment, come watch me at the Farmers Market explain how to stuff Center Cut Pork Chops with Apples and Sweet Life BBQ Sauce...it's like watching charades. The recipe is a favorite from my fishing bud Sparky in Cumberland, Maine and is already a hit to others I have shared it with. I even had an Auburn grad understand it! Go Gators!

Go to http://www.sweetlifesaucecompany.com/ and you can see some more details on this awesome, but easy recipe for the grill.

I'll leave you with this little video recipe we had at the house this week...Sweet Life Grilled Chicken Wings Caramelized with Sweet Life BBQ Sauce...they are as good tasting as they look in the video...

Click here and it will take you to the video

Until next time, as we say at Sweet Life Sauce Company...ALL is well in the land...and Bret Hill...send me your e-mail dude!