Review: A Canadian BBQ Sauce?

Creator: Horn Dawgs
Location: Oshawa, Canada
Cost: Only available in select stores in Canada (So make some friends north of the border and have them send you some.)

 A few weeks back I had the pleasure of meet Wifred Reinke of Oshawa Ogre’s Views, News & BBQ’s, also known as @oshawaogre on Twitter. He, Big Wayner and I met for lunch and enjoyed a great meal of BBQ together. After lunch Fred gave me a bottle of Horn Dawgs Sauce to try. I gladly accepted and told him I would review it.


I was a little skeptical about the sauce, after all what do Canadian’s know about BBQ? Seriously, they probably know more about cold smoking then BBQ. Well it turns out there is a strong BBQ contingent up north of our border and they do a fine job at cooking up BBQ. The sauce has won nine first and second place awards and it shows. The Horn Dawgs team has a number of trophies to prove that they know their way around a pit and BBQ.

Horn Dawgs sauce is thick and pours slowly. It is a nice deep umber color. A dark, brownish red. You can see some of the spices floating in the sauce and it has a nice sweet, slightly tangy aroma. It has a thick sweet molassesy flavor at first and then you get hit with some heat. It is a well flavored sauce.

The sauce.

I used some of the sauce on my Super Bowl ribs to glaze them. That is when the flavor really seemed to take off. The sweet countered the salty of the rub for a nice mouth harmony with a slight heat to the finish. The sauce helped to make the ribs have a full body flavor that everyone enjoyed. It is also really good on MOINK balls.

Super Super Bowl ribs.

As a plain sauce I wouldn’t rank it at the top of my list but when cooked on ribs or other meat it really brings out the flavor in the sauce and enhances the meat. Heating a sauce up changes the flavor profile of a sauce. Some sauces I like cold and others I like warm. This one I like warm.

On the Gibbs Ribs scale* I have to give them a strong 3/4 rack of ribs. This sauce didn’t knock my socks off but it is a good strong sauce and I can understand why people like it. I just prefer a little twang to my sauce. What can I say, I like Eastern NC Vinegar sauce and subscribe to the SC mustard sauce heresy.

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.