Cooking: Barbecue Sauce Experiment, First Four

I've always had a soft spot for good barbecue, and I include pretty much any meat cooked low and slow for long times when I say that. A key part of BBQ for me is the sauce, and there are many restaurants that do it really really well. In Tucson alone we have Mr. K's (easily the favorite, but quite a drive) and Brushfire BBQ, both of which have amazing sauce. I've been eating a lot of chicken over the past few years, as it's cheap, full of protein, and easy to make delicious. BBQ sauce usually finds its way into either the marinade or goes on top right before I eat it, but it's always been the store-bought stuff. After seeing fantastic results by dousing my chicken in some leftover sauce from Brushfire, it occurred to me that I should try to make my own rather than buy it pre-made. I looked around the internet for recipes and found that not only were the majority of the ingredients were already in my kitchen from making beef jerky, but every recipe (with minor variations) used the same core ingredients. I selected 11 different recipes and gathered all the ingredients necessary. For the preparation, every recipe had some variation on "mix the ingredients, bring to a boil, simmer for a while". To minimize the variance I'm applying the same preparation procedure to each run, whisk together everything on the list, bring to a boil, then simmer over low heat for 45 minutes. I'll be recording my commentary on each batch here, along with anyone I can conscript into giving their thoughts.

Ideally, once a good number of established recipes are tested, I'll have enough information to begin manually probing the phase space. While reading I've come across variations that merit investigation, such as using coffee in place of water, or making an entirely mustard-based sauce. Whiskey and honey variations are also on the list. From all this I hope to arrive at a recipe that I like the most, though I wouldn't be disappointed to accidentally replicate Mr. K's sauce.

Batch #1: The first recipe I tried had the slightly over-the-top name, "The Best Homemade BBQ Sauce Ever". Essentially just ketchup, apple cider vinegar, water, brown sugar (I used dark, other recipes call specifically for light), worcestershire sauce and spices. The first tastes, albeit on its own and with a tortilla chip,  yielded lukewarm responses: "Very mild. Doesn't really stand out. More spices would improve it." and "Yep, that's barbecue sauce.". Over scrambled eggs it was totally usable, with just the slightest kick of heat, lots of sweetness and vinegar forming the base of the flavor. Several chicken breasts were marinated in the sauce, cooked at 350 F for 30 minutes and served with the sauce on top. On chicken (first day): It's got a good amount of sweetness, but the rest of the flavor is dominated by vinegar. On the second day I was looking forward to it, tasty, just not life-changing.

Batch #2: For the second trial I decided to go as far afield as I could. I selected this recipe, entitled simply "Absolutely Awesome BBQ Sauce". It drops the cider vinegar entirely and adds a comic amount of hot pepper sauce (I used Tabasco), which does indeed contain plenty of vinegar. In addition is uses rum (dark, I'm guessing), soy sauce, and crushed cloves of garlic, which make it rather unique among the ones I collected. My first impression while cooking it was that it smelled substantially more salty and spicy, and that definitely comes through in the taste. I first tried it over eggs. Quite spicy, especially compared to #1. Definitely more flavors running around, which gives it some depth, but the spiciness needs to come down for it to be competitive for most people. In future iterations I imagine I'll bring the Tabasco down by half and substitute additional ketchup, water, or rum. This one also came out surprisingly thin, consistency-wise.

Batch #3: The third recipe I tried involves yellow mustard, which was a first. Outside of that it held fast to the basic building blocks of ketchup, brown sugar, cider vinegar, and a few spices. It definitely didn't have the super-spicey problem of #2. Just like the others this was tried on chicken breasts and eggs. Strong tangy vinegar and mustard flavor at the fore, with just a hint of heat. My first thought is that this could use black pepper for a little more kick. The second taster confirmed that it was his favorite so far.

Batch #4: The fourth recipe, marketing itself as Big Daddy's Carolina BBQ sauce, was a second vinegar-and-mustard based attempt. In addition, it required an extra ingredient that I don't usually keep on hand: ground white pepper. I was able to pick up a few ounces at the local spice shop for about $3. The preparation also had a minor alteration, a handful of the unique ingredients had to be added in a second heating step, namely the butter, soy sauce, and liquid smoke. I did deviate from the published recipe by reducing the liquid smoke to 1 tsp from 1 tbsp. My initial reactions while preparing this included "Wow, that's really a lot of chili powder", and "this is a lot thinner than the other sauces". There was less apparent mustard taste compared to #3, and a slow building heat as opposed to the instantaneous heat of #2.

Arcane Ages/TERAMUD: Necromancer overhaul

It came to my attention a while back that the Necromancer class on the MUD had a large collection of glaring issues.  With help from Winterstar and Lascelles I was able to sink a good deal of time into fixing myriad problems with the class. A list of the changes is presented below:

Summons

  • Ghost, lesser and Ghost, greater were fixed such that the ability works as indicated in the helpfile.
  • Ghoul, devouring no longer summons a skeletal fury instead. The ghoul now eats corpses on command.
  • Ghoul, venomous no longer summons a lesser wraith instead.
  • Greater shade now works.
  • Shadow warrior now works.
  • Summon Dracolich now has help file.
  • Summon lich now works. Helpfile added to clarify current working.
  • Wraith Lord no longer summons a Wraith Knight instead.
  • Damage, AC, Stop, and abilities adjusted to make pets more comparable to golems, treants, phantasms, and other summons.
  • Abilities adjusted to maintain themes for each line:
    • Skeletons (and skeletal dragons) are aggressive, susceptible to fire and acid attacks.
    • Ghouls are more resilient and immune to poison and draining attacks.
    • Shades are incorporeal, making them harder to hit.
    • Wraiths hit harder, possess potent cold-based attacks. Immune to cold, and draining attacks.
  • As Necromancers rely on their pets as a primary damage source, all pets now incur NO PENALTY to earned XP. Go forth and raise an army!
  • All summons now use dissolve(), meaning objects inside targeted corpses drop in the room instead of being destroyed. The same function is used when the Ghoul, Devouring feeds.
  • All summons renamed to fit the "Type, Subtype" template.

Other spells

  • Blackmantle works now. Help  file has been updated to describe how it functions.
  • Messages fixed on Soul whip. Fixed major typo in help file.
  • Messages fixed on Shadow gate.
  • Added damage formula to help file for sap and sap, minor

Runes

  • Added par rune at level 100 to allow spectre touch to be learned at 106.
  • Added bod rune at level 145 to allow backmantle to be learned at 148.
  • Added met rune at level 54 to allow dispel magic to be learned at 54.

Skills

  • Unearth corpse has been disabled for the time being.
  • Necromancy i, ii, and iii renamed to Necromancy Mastery i, ii, and iii to better fit with the other mastery skills.

Help Files

  • Help file for the necromancer class has been updated
  • Help files for all the summons have been grouped by line (e.g. shades, wraiths, etc).

There's still a few issues that I will be working on as time goes on, namely:

  • Zin'Carla doesn't work, might require new low-level features to be implemented.
  • Necromancy Mastery doesn't actually do anything useful at present.
  • Necromancers get alchemy (brew potions) but don't learn any useful
  • Nethershield can't be brief'd like normal damageshield messages.
  • Negative energy spells can't be aimed at undead minions, regardless of nice settings. Necromancers should be able to heal their pets.