Sauces Are Overwhelming

This is going to be one of those “picky eater shared experiences” that you either get or you don’t. And that’s okay.

One of the things that has always separated me from “most people,” when it comes to eating, is my disdain for sauces. This extends to a stronger pickiness when it comes to drinks and liquids of all kinds – but personal preferences with drinks tends to be more tolerated by less-picky eaters than an objection to sauces. Sauces, condiments, dressings – if it’s liquid-y and strongly-flavored, chances are I’m staying away.

Sauces are just plain overwhelming.

I think that’s only just finally kicked in for me as I’m trying to explore a specific sauce, but “overwhelming” is exactly how I’d describe it.

Here’s some contradictions that I tend to wind up in:

• I love ketchup with certain fries, but not all fries. And I don’t really like it on meatloaf or other similar foods, and I honestly kind of prefer to not have it on my burgers (though I usually eat them that way anyway). I do love it on hot dogs, however.
• I enjoy (more and more every year) barbecue sauce when integrated in foods (pulled pork, brisket, etc.) but the second I get my tongue on just a straight dab of the sauce, I really don’t want anything to do with it.
• I’ve learned to love the ways sour cream can enhance certain foods and meals (mashed potatoes, baked ziti/lasagna) – but if I can actually taste it (as in “too much” put in the food, or some not mixed in fully), I get grossed out. I also can’t stand the smell.
• I finally eat salads – but I had to kind of brute force myself to love lettuce, spinach, etc. through them rather than drown them out in dressing as I cannot seem to stand dressings.
• I could easily be described as a garlic addict. I will put garlic in and on just about anything, in any form. I like making roasted garlic pasta wherein I roast garlic heads drizzled in pre-jarred minced garlic with garlic power/salt sprinkled on top. I can’t get enough. But those little garlic sauce cups you get from pizza joints? Don’t bring those near me.
• Hell, even marinara sauce I had to warm up to.

That last one brings up the first overwhelming characteristic of sauces.

Temperature

Often, sauces are included on things in a way that they have a completely different temperature to the rest of the food.

Sauce on a sandwich or burger, ketchup on a burger, barbecue sauce on the side or drizzled on top of meat, sour cream added onto a potato or included with beans and rice for a Mexican food plate, even marinara cups included with breadsticks or stuffed crust pizza – they’re all usually cold. And often very cold.

Not only do I find the coldness of the sauce itself to be a strong stimulus that makes eating them more difficult (more offensive to my mouth), it heightens the taste characteristics (or at least primes my tastebuds more) to highlight what I might not like about them.

Even worse is the contrast when they’re deployed.

Biting into a warm food thing and getting a very cold (and wet) spot sets alarm bells off in my brain. My tongue amplifies the contrast probably way higher than it actually is, and some primal part of my mind is shouting “SOMETHING’S WRONG, THIS ISN’T SAFE, ABORT!”

You could argue the evolutionary advantages to such a thing, if it’s at all realistic to make that connection, but as the one going through it… it sucks.

Ketchup is something that as a kid, it’s almost impossible to avoid. Everyone lathers their kids in ketchup for fries, hot dogs, etc. Especially in the Heinz era where sugary ketchup is the norm, it’s basically treated as a way to get kids to eat the things it’s on. (Cue the Bluey episode where Bluey and Bingo discover the not-sugar-free ketchup that Bandit and Chili had been hiding from them.) So while I have hangups with it, I can at least tolerate it in most scenarios where I’d prefer not to have it. The contrast is a staple experience that I’ve had my entire life, lots of time to be desensitized to it. (It can even be advantageous, as getting fresh, super hot fries and dipping them in the cool ketchup means you can eat them much quicker!)

The marinara example is probably the most frustrating one for me. I love marinara sauce. Tomato-based sauces of any kind are a huge staple of my pasta-obsessed, pizza-loving life. But the cold temperature of most cups of marinara sauce makes it a little less enjoyable up front (can literally make the bitterness of the tomatoes more present) and the contrast with my breadstick or pizza crust’s warm temperature just overloads my senses for what is otherwise my favorite meal.

I tend to prefer marinara warm whenever that’s an option.

Other sauces, however, I can smell them coming and my flight instinct engages.

Smell

For many, the smell of a good savory sauce is one of the best parts. It gets their mouth watering and they want to dive in. But to me, most sauces do not smell great. They smell too much like the specific sweetness or spice giving them flavor, or they just smell like vinegar.

Mayo, mustard, ranch, and most salad dressings and hot sauces smell far too offensively for me to even want to go near. Too much exposure (combined with visual exposure to their texture or viscosity) can even make me gag. I just can’t do it.

Nothing’s worse than thinking I’m getting a good burger or something only to get a whiff of the sauce hiding inside and immediately being unable to eat it.

Vinegar

One of the primary ingredients in many sauces that can make them unappealing is vinegar. Ketchup, most barbecue sauces, tobasco sauce, hot sauces, vinegarettes for salads, and many more are strongly based on vinegar.

Vinegar is great. It adds a nice, acidic kick to foods (or sauces) that need it, and it’s strong enough to be used as a cleaner. (Though the idea of putting a liquid that can be used as a cleaner into my body does sound terrifying…)

The problem is, vinegar is disgusting. It smells horrible. Whenever we do clean something with vinegar, I can’t stand to go into the same room with it until the next day. It lingers both on objects, and feels like it takes up space in the air.

I’ve slowly warmed up to using vinegar directly in some meals to add a tiny bit of acid when it’s necessary, but smelling/feeling/tasting too much of it from a sauce becomes an immediate turnoff.

Flavor Strength

Ultimately, most sauces are designed to carry a strong, forward flavor in the first place. I find many to be too over-powering over whatever I’m eating them on, rather than complementing.

Due to all the reasons I’ve already described for not liking sauces, I’d rather focus on making sure the food item itself is well-seasoned and flavored enough for sauces to not be necessary.

Why put some weird sauce that will completely shift the flavor profile of my burger if I made a good patty and assembled a good burger to begin with? When my steak is already perfectly cooked and seasoned to explode with flavor in your mouth, why drown it in steak sauce? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

As a certified* (* per a basic taste bud stamping test in a psych 101 class in college) super taster, I prefer to build up nice, subtle flavors that complement each other well and end up with a great result. An overwhelming sauce kinda defeats the entire point of that work.

That’s why I don’t understand people who want an extra buttload of barbecue sauce on pulled pork. When I make pulled pork, I put in a lot of work to make sure the rub (and the sauce included when cooking) creates a wonderful flavor that complements and enhances the pork so it’s a joy to eat. Smothering it in half a bottle of sauce just means you’re eating barbecue sauce with pork as the vehicle for it, and you don’t really taste the pork.

Contrast

Lastly this comes down to something that might just be a “me thing” – but it’s the contrast of the sauce’s flavor versus the main ingredients. This is often desirable for many sauces and dressings, but becomes a problem for me. It’s overstimulating to break down and process complex flavor profiles in contrast with each other.

When I build a sandwich, I assemble my salty meats and smokey cheeses (maybe seasoned fried peppers and onions) in a way that everything complements each other well and produces a consistent, delicious flavor that makes my tongue happy. Adding in a juicy cold tomato slice or high-flavor cold sauce both contrasts the temperature and the flavor profile in a way that only distracts from the core reason I’m eating the sandwich.

I know this is something more unique to me than the others. I know plenty of people who want a nice balance of contrast in their sandwiches (and other foods) and my meaty subs tend to be too “samey” for some people. But it’s a core part of why I don’t like sauces – and the sauces I do like have to complement what they’re being used for.

The Quest

The whole thing that got me thinking about this was a trip to a local barbecue joint, Texas BBQ Lady. This restaurant has a great selection of ribs, pork, beef, and some incredible sides. But what stood out to me the most was that I never once minded getting a direct taste of the barbecue sauce on my pulled pork, at all. It was delicious, but didn’t have the usual characteristics that pulled me out of the experience.

It wasn’t too sweet, it wasn’t cold, it wasn’t too vinegar-forward. It just complemented the pork and enhanced the experience.

I’ve mostly only ever been exposed to Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. We use it in pulled pork (along with some rub) and my family uses it on other things or to dip things in. I’ve always had complaints about the sweetness and avoided getting direct tastes, but I’ve also never strayed away from it because it was a known variable that I could warm up to.

But after this recent restaurant experience, I feel charged up to find me a better barbecue sauce to cook with, one I might actually look forward to using. I’ve gotten some great recommendations from friends that I plan on pursuing, but immediately kind of… froze.

It’s scary to try new sauces, because it can be scary to try new things. But also because sauces kind of represent the highest level of risk when it comes to trying things.

Sauces are mostly made of elements that I don’t like or can’t tolerate when it comes to eating. The smell, the temperature, the contrast, the overpowering flavor are all overwhelming and the idea of risking trying a new one that could be offensive in any one of those categories – nevertheless all of them – is just terrifying. And that comes back to the core problem of me not wanting to eat them directly, so finding out if I like them or not is quite difficult. I’ll just have to do some initial sniff/”lizard lick” tests and then cook with it, risk not enjoying the entire meal.

That’s just really hard sometimes.

Sauces are just overwhelming.