This sauce was born in Texas and lives in Spokane, and I cant live without it
Allow me to introduce my first food love, the thing I will put on, figuratively speaking, everything: Longhorn Bar-B-Q Sauce, from my home state of Washington.
This condiment is not housed in a fancy glass jar; it did not make an appearance in the “America’s Test Kitchen” Season 14 evaluation of high-end barbecue sauces; it contains high-fructose corn syrup. And I pour it most frequently — sorry, not sorry — on tacos.
Wait, no, don’t go! I can explain.
The sauce is made by Longhorn Barbecue, a restaurant born in Houston in 1946. (It's no relation to the LongHorn Steakhouse restaurant chain, founded in 1981 in Atlanta, nor to the Longhorns of the University of Texas at Austin.) In 1956, the restaurant's five founding brothers, Gene, David, Chic, Don and Claude Lehnertz, along with their cousin Duke Fette moved their self-proclaimed "Southern Pit Style" barbecue to Spokane, Wash. With them went their sauce, made from a recipe whose base originated with Agnes Lehnertz, the Lehnertz brothers' mother. "She used to do the catering for baptisms and weddings and stuff like that," David Allen, the son of David Lehnertz, told me over the phone from Auburn, Wash., where he owns a Longhorn restaurant.
The original sauce was a little spicier and “didn’t appeal to the palate of the northwest people,” says Allen. After some sweetening, the sauce’s formula has remained the same since about 1958; it was made and sold in the restaurants until 1984, when a production center opened in Spokane Valley. (Allen is also chief executive of the center.) Today it can be found on grocery store shelves in more than 20 states and is sold from Longhorn’s website.
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I’ve been using Longhorn (my pet name for the sauce) for so long, I don’t even remember my first taste of the sticky, sweet stuff. I’ve poured it on scrambled eggs, baked potatoes, pizza and, as already admitted, tacos. In college, after evenings of legally consuming adult beverages, I would return to my apartment and pour Longhorn onto tortilla chips (the scoop kind, obviously). I feel vindicated in announcing this because my roommate deemed it delicious, too.
Share this articleShareNot even a move across the globe (from Washington to Germany) at age 13 could tear us apart: I dutifully packed my bag with bottles, and when those ran out, my grandmother sent reinforcements. Whenever I returned to Washington, I was sure to save room in my suitcase.
Eventually the Internet intervened and reduced the strain of our long-distance relationship. (I am compelled to note, with a smile of smug satisfaction, that the sauce is not so mainstream as to be purchased on Amazon.) Truly, nothing can compare to finding the one you love in the place you first met, so trips back west come with a requirement of at least five bottles returning east. I refuse to throw away an empty Longhorn bottle until there is one to replace it; I must always be able to open the refrigerator and see its bright red cap smiling back at me.
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Since I’m telling all, I’ll admit that, yes, there have been others. Who am I to resist trying a dab of a mustardy sauce, a dip of a tangy vinegar base? And you can’t blame me for thinking sweet thoughts about Sweet Baby Ray’s. I am, after all, only human.
But at the end of the day,I always return to my faithful “lip smackin’ good” Longhorn.
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