Not too long ago, The Shed re-released their suite of sauces and marinades with a new label and a “junk free” declaration. I’ll go through each of the offerings I was sent by the great folks at The Shed in individual blog posts. Today let’s check out the Southern Spicy Sweet Shed Spread.
I’ve had the honor of meeting the folks from The Shed briefly last year at Memphis in May, and I hope to do so again this year. In the past, I’ve reviewed their Kinky Asian Marinade and had their Spicy Orange Sunset Sauce as part of a spicy wing throwdown on HotSauceDaily. I also had the chance to check out their Ocean Springs location prior to it burning down and being rebuilt. So I was looking forward to trying this out!
The Sauce
Ingredients: brown sugar, water, tomato paste, molasses, vinegar, salt, spices, garlic powder, onion powder, hot sauce, citric acid, mustard, jalapeno pepper, natural smoke flavor, lemon juice concentrate, turmeric, spice extractives, habanero pepper, carrot powder. Gluten-free and apparently HFCS-free. Definitely positives for people who look for that sort of thing.
As usual, I evaluate the sauce against my three A’s: Appearance, Aroma, and A Taste.
Appearance: maroon red in color, very thick texture but pours out pretty quickly, fairly smooth consistency
Aroma: sweetness and a bit of spice on the nose, very rich smell
A Taste: sweetness… buttery rich sweetness, heat (but not too much heat), hints of chili powder, natural smoke flavor is present but not overpowering
The Results
Chris at NibbleMeThis also has a great review of this sauce, so I would suggest checking it out! For this review, I stuck to the basics – grilled chicken. I used the sauce in two different ways – as a dipping sauce and as a finishing sauce. This sauce works very nicely as a finishing sauce on chicken, and I suspect it would do the same on pork chops and ribs as well. The sauce thickened up very nicely when used as a finishing sauce, giving the chicken a great color. The heat was definitely more noticeable when the sauce was used as a dipping sauce, and the heat level toned down a bit when the sauce was used as a finishing sauce. I could use this as my ketchup replacement for French fries. It’s that tasty!
The Giveaway
Wait, what!?! There’s a giveaway?? Sure is!! Since I have a second bottle of this sauce, let’s do a contest. The winner will get two bottles of sauce from The Shed – one bottle of Spicy Sweet and one bottle of Spicy Mustard.
I’m going to keep this giveaway simple – simply leave a comment on this blog post. Bonus points if you say nice things about me The contest will start today and end on Tuesday at 11:59pm EST. The winner will be picked at random using Random.org and announced on the Facebook page for Big Wayner’s BBQ Blog the following day. The winner will have 72 hours to contact me with shipping info, or I’ll draw again. And sadly, because I’m on a budget, I’ve got to limit this contest to US entrants only.
Good luck!
Big Wayner
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