The Key Ingredient In Sweet Baby Ray's Is Another Name-Brand Sauce

Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce is a summer cookout staple that's been in the backyard BBQ arsenal since it burst on the scene in 1995. The sauce with the sweet, smoky, and mildly spicy flavor consistently places high among rankings of grocery store barbecue sauces – we even picked it as our No. 2 favorite. It's also super affordable, often clocking in at less than $3 for an 18-ounce bottle depending on where you shop. While we don't know exactly what's in the exact secret recipe for Sweet Baby Ray's, Dave Raymond, the namesake of the beloved condiment, let it slip in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that the spicy side of the sauce comes from another name-brand product: Tabasco.

If you're wondering why a popular sauce is made from, well, another popular sauce, the answer most likely is because Sweet Baby Ray's started out as a hobby. As such, the recipe probably used ingredients that Dave Raymond and his brother Larry had on hand at home. Tabasco, which has been around for more than 150 years, is a simple hot sauce that's made with vinegar, salt, and two kinds of spicy chili peppers, which gives it its iconic red color.

One of the little-known secrets about Sweet Baby Ray's that's contributed to its success is its balance of flavor. The formula is designed to be a bit on the sweet side, which creator Dave Raymond told the Chicago Tribune was designed to complement the flavor of food without overpowering it. The recipe uses brown sugar to balance out the spicy heat of Tabasco. When the sauce is refrigerated, which represses your tongue's ability to taste sweetness and mutes the sugar, you can taste the spicy Tabasco a little better. When the sauce is warmed up on a piece of BBQ chicken or pork chop, the heat tastes much milder.

Of course, if you've been to the grocery store lately, you've probably noticed that there is more than one variety of Sweet Baby Ray's. These days, the company makes more than 20 different flavors, including a mild hot buffalo sauce that we think is pretty good – we ranked it as No. 5 on our best-of list. We don't know if Sweet Baby Ray's wing sauce — or any of its other sauces for that matter — also incorporates Tabasco, but it's packed with lots of cayenne-esque pepper heat, so at the very least you won't have to add much (if any) extra Tabasco at home if you're going for that style of spiciness.