Consider trying these locally made sauces and spice mixes for your Fourth of July meals.
Award-winning hot sauce
Independence Day meals are a great time for Komodo Black, the sweet and spicy soy-based hot sauce named best sauce in this year’s University of Georgia Flavor of Georgia competition. The sauce and its Komodo Gold (bold and spicy) and Komodo Red (sweet and spicy) companions are the creation of Gabe Fung-A-Wing and his mother, Debbie Fung-A-Wing, who is the chef. All three sauces are made with habanero peppers, so they are truly hot, but these are not one-dimensional sauces. The gold is the most straightforward, with its combination of habanero, vinegar, onion, garlic and salt. The red adds brown sugar, more varieties of pepper and galangal root to the mix. And the black, the champion, starts with sweet Indonesian soy sauce. The sauces are based on sambals, the traditional chile sauce used to season pretty much everything at every meal in Indonesia. In homage to a great-grandmother who was a victim, a portion of the sale of each bottle goes to organizations fighting human trafficking. Komodo Black is available for monthly delivery.
$12.50 per 5-ounce bottle of Komodo Black, Komodo Gold or Komodo Red sauce. $11.25 per 5-ounce bottle of Komodo Black delivered monthly. Available at Atlanta Grill Co., Stripling’s General Store, Roswell General, Church Street Market, Amazon and at komodosauces.com.
Credit: Sabrina Terry
Credit: Sabrina Terry
Chicken rubs
Shaun Terry and his family raise organic chickens at their Mansfield farm. It stands to reason they eat a lot of chicken, so it’s not a surprise they’ve created two chicken seasoning mixes to spice up their meals. Their Main Chick spice rub has a salt base, seasoned with rosemary and thyme. We tried the Side Chick spice rub, which also is salt-based, with rosemary and thyme, but also includes a bit of cayenne, making it the spicier of the two. The herbs definitely shine through. Terry recommends either one as a rub for hot wings, and the family uses them in place of Cajun seasoning, as well. And, you don’t have to restrict their use to chicken. We used it to season rice, sprinkled some on potato salad, put some in shrimp gumbo and even used some in a vinaigrette. We found it was a really nice, all-purpose seasoning.
$9.27 per 5.5-ounce jar. Available at the Peachtree Road, Morningside and Freedom farmers markets, or for pickup at Grateful Pastures Farm (see website), and by ordering at gratefulpastures.com.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Barbecue sauce and rubs
We couldn’t open the box of seasonings and barbecue sauce from Porky Goodness without laughing. There’s Patsy Swine pork rub and Tanya Clucker chicken rub. We love a company with a sense of humor. Athens-based Katie Throne launched Porky Goodness, her sauce and rub company, during the pandemic. She’d been making her barbecue sauce and sharing it in Mason jars with friends and family for years. The pandemic gave her the impetus to begin preparing larger batches, and making it available for the rest of us. We found the sauce pretty much pleased everyone, which is hard to do. Those who favor vinegar-based sauces loved it. Those who want a tomatoey sweet sauce, with some hickory smoke to it, thought this one was perfect. We can see using lots of this over the summer. And, the rubs were great, especially Patsy Swine, with its base of honey powder and plenty of seasoning.
$9.99 for a 4-ounce package of spice rub, $16 for a two-pack, $9.99 for a 12-ounce bottle of barbecue sauce. Available at Striplings General Store in Bogart or at porkygoodnessbbq.com.
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