Sarah surprised me the other day by coming home with a bag full of Baxter’s Original BBQ Sauces. These are made locally by hand (unlike another sauce that I claimed was locally made previously) out in Waikane. We ended up with a selection of six, Teriyaki, Sweet & Smoky, Chipolte, Spicy Bourbon, Dragons Breath and an all natural New Zealand made Land Mine hot sauce.

The packaging features the creator dressed up to the theme of the sauce, all the same, but slightly different.

I wanted to try all of the sauces at once, so that’s exactly what I did. What better way to do this than with chicken wings!

PLANKED SAUCED CHICKEN WINGS

For this test I felt the best way to do this was to bake the wings on a soaked cedar plank in the Weber.

Soaked the cedar plank for a couple hours while I got every thing else ready. As it is moving into spring here in New Zealand I took the sunny afternoon to it’s full advantage and brought all my grills out onto the deck and gave them a good clean to get all that winter grime off them.

Heated a whole Weber Chimney full of heat bead briquettes and banked them to a side of the grill for some medium indirect heat. I wanted the grill to be around 180°C / 350°F for the wings.

Let the grill heat up for about 5-10 minutes before placing the wings on the soaked plank and placing on the indirect side of the grill.

Baked for around 20-25 minutes turning once until the skin had darkened. I then slathered on each of the sauces to a single wing and baked for a further 10 minutes turning once and saucing the other side. Once the sauce had  baked in I sauced a tiny bit more and moved the wings directly over the heat until the sauce caramelised and charred just slightly.

Removed from the heat and let them cool down just slightly enough so that they were able to be picked up with out taking the skin off my fingers and dug in.

Here are my unfiltered thoughts as they came to me while enjoying the sauced wings.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL TERIYAKI

• Really tastes like teriyaki.
• Would be really good if wings were marinated for hours in this.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL SWEET & SMOKY

• Really nice.
• Not hot, has a nice sweet tang.
• Really easy to eat, no heat.
• Light hint of smoke, not sure if from cedar plank or not.
• Delicious.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL CHIPOLTE

• Not as hot as other chipotle sauces, not a bad thing.
• Really easy to eat.
• Complemented the wings well.
• Hint of heat creeping up at the end.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL SPICY BOURBON

• Little bit of heat / spice.
• Sweetness to it.
• Heat is really nice, dancing on my tongue.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL DRAGONS BREATH

• Start feeling the heat right away.
• Feel the mouth starting to heat up – not sure if it’s the dragon breath or a combo of all the previous sauces.
• Really good.

BAXTER’S ORIGINAL LAND MINE HOT SAUCE

• Just had a sip of beer, pale ale – not sure if will help cleanse the pallet or not. It won’t I think.
• Really spicey after the dragons breath.
• Grabbed the least amount of sauce on the wing.
• As its a hot sauce its thinner.
• Can feel the heat, glad it wasn’t caked on.
• Will try again in a different setting.
• Mouth is pretty hot.

CONCLUSION

All of the sauces are great and I can’t wait to try them out further with other dishes. After my taste test I threw the rest of the wings I had onto another plank and sauced them with the Sweet & Smoky and Sarah and I enjoyed them all with  some coleslaw and potato salad. Sunday night dinners done right.