East High Farmer's Market
John Johnston
Hey, good-looking, here's what Big Mike's got cooking.
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Under the orange and yellow tent, a man with an Australian accent looks at the drawing on the Big Mike's Original Barbecue Sauce label, then looks at Mike.
"Are you the Big Mike?" he finally asks.
Mike McCrea looks down at his impressive belly. "Looks like I am," he replies.
"All right, then, mate, I need five bottles of each: the mild one --"
"It's not mild, exactly."
"Well, yes, and the hot, and the, uh, what do you call the other one?"
"Could be hot, could be extra hot, could be you can't talk for a while after you eat it."
"Well, bag them up. I'm taking this back home by dogsled, by carrier pigeon, whatever it takes."
"When you run out," Big Mike promises, "write me a letter and I'll send you more."
Another victory for word -- and taste -- of mouth, Big Mike's only marketing strategy. Life is good. Standing at farmer's markets peddling sauce beats driving a hazardous waste truck, his profession for the previous fifteen years. In fact, since Mike launched his barbecue-sauce business six months ago, the only thing that hasn't gone according to plan is this: His appetite has been killed by a string of ninety-degree days and long hours in the kitchen. Without even thinking about it, he's dropped fifty pounds over the past two months.
"If this keeps up," he worries, "I won't be Big Mike anymore."
The Origins of Big Mike: Five Points, 1967
Night falls. Mrs. McCrea, Mike's mom, usually makes what she calls goulash for dinner: a conglomeration of leftovers, canned corn and some kind of binder. "Not bad-tasting leftovers, like other people eat," Mike recalls. "My dad always said she could make a great meal out of nothing at all, and, oh, the meat and the potatoes, the meatloaf. I got this thing for meatloaf. I got this thing for anything except for black-eyed peas and lima beans and okra, which are all slimy and make me shiver. Why would you ask anyone to eat a thing like that?"
Tonight Mrs. McCrea is not asking anyone to eat a thing like that; home from her job as a third-grade teacher, she's frying burgers in a huge cast-iron pan. By the time Mr. McCrea comes in from his job -- "He took care of a house and grounds," Mike recalls. "'Butler' might be the correct word for it" -- all six McCrea kids are home, and everyone sits down together. And if they don't eat what's put before them, Mr. McCrea tells them firmly to get UP from the table.
"Later that night, I grab three or four more of those burgers and put them in foil and take them to bed with me," Mike recalls. "I put them under my pillow. They are huge, and I eat them in the middle of the night. I loved both my parents, and I wish they could see me now."
Mr. and Mrs. McCrea have both passed away -- Mrs. McCrea recently. But the recipes she began sharing with Big Mike, her eldest son, live on. He's not above shedding a few tears when he thinks about his parents. "I hear I'm not supposed to cry because I'm a man," he says. "Hogwash."
Ways to Eat Big Mike's Original Barbecue Sauce, as revealed during a summer of customer contact
Dip sushi in it
Slather it on corn on the cob
Apply to pizza crusts
Down one shot glass full several times a day; it will keep you going.
"If you have an etiquette thing," Mike advises, "eat it out of a spoon." Then blink your eyes, blow your nose and shiver a few times as the sauce shoots into your system.
"A lot of the sauce out there is nothing but sweetened ketchup, so you have to be prepared," he explains. "A lot of the stuff on the shelves in the stores is pure ca-ca Kraft."
Geographically speaking, Big Mike's sauce falls between Kansas City/North Carolina sweetness and Texas hottitude. As an officially certified judge with the Kansas City Barbecue Society, he knows this and more, but he can't share sauce specifics for fear of "divulging trade secrets." Since completing a correspondence course with the Denver-based Culinary Institute of Smoked Cooking, however, he's become more opinionated than ever as to the most obvious application of Big Mike's sauce: barbecue.
"Remember these words," he advises, "low and slow. Do not boil or parboil your ribs. Do not boil anything."
Instead, put your ribs or chicken quarters (with or without skin) in a shallow pan, sauce lightly and add about a half-inch of water. Cover with foil to let it steam. Put the pan into a 275-degree oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, then turn, re-sauce and cook at least that long again. Then finish your meats on a hot grill, brushing on the sauce whenever you think about it, but you won't have to think -- the smell will remind you.
Bottle It: Commerce City, 1990
Big Mike had been trucking waste oil and solvents all over the country (and eating regional barbecue while he was at it) for most of his adult life when word went out that the next Onyx International Waste Company picnic would be a potluck. The barbecue he whipped up that day became legendary, not just because it disappeared within minutes, but also because it was the first time someone tasted Mike's sauce, then looked him in the eye and said, "Bottle it." The next year, Mike's boss gave him three days off to get ready for the company picnic. After that, all pretense of potluck was dropped, and the gathering became known as Big Mike's Rib Cookoff. He began catering private parties and entered last year's Blues and Bones barbecue contest.
