Zip Sauce - Looking for the Extra Flavor on the Grill?

Zip Sauce - Maybe This is What Your Grilled Food is Missing

If you are just tossing your meat on the grill, then you're probably not getting the flavor burst that you've had when eating out at a good restaurant or off your friends grills who have learned to season up.

Michael Esshaki, a Michigan chef who is known for his skills with Italian foods, noted that the best steaks in his area were sauced. By sauced in this caes, I'm talking about a thinner product and not the Kansas style barbecue sauce which is thick and put on meat near the end of grilling. I'd be more likely to call it a marinade in grilling terms. It pours out like Worchestershire sauce. But, the flavor is a lot different.

The original idea for using Zip Sauce involves melting 1/4 cup of butter and then adding 1/4 of the bottle of Zip Sauce. It is then served over steak or whatever you want to give a nice buttery and rich flavor boost. Simple enough. And, this does make a delicous dip or sauce.

I found that straight Zip Sauce mixed in with 80/20 hamburger meat (just a few splashes) and then sprinkled over the burgers along with a seasoning salt (Lawry's in this case) and lemon/pepper worked out great. Note that I'm using pretty high fat meat for grilling (makes them juicier), so I knocked out the butter for this burger grill out. This also saved a step (for the lazy) and gave me a chance to get the full flavor of the product. I try not to mix up flavors on new products, or I may not really know what something tastes like.

Grilled Hamburgers with Zip Sauce

The flavor here with Zip Sauce is zippy. We got an interesting and very good hotter taste on the burgers, but it was not really a hot sauce flavor like most hot grilling sauces. The taste was a low hot (zip does describe it well) that I'd place it as sort of a combination of Italian and Asian. OK. I know that sounds strange, but it works and really well.

I'd not heard of Zip Sauce until Carrie emailed to tell me about it and to offer to send a bottle to see if I thought my readers would like it. It sounded a little different from the usual grill products I use, but anything that can be used indoors can be used outdoors, and I like to experiment.

Check out the Zip Sauce page where they are adding all kinds of great recipes (and have a contest going now - spring/summer 2012). And, you can also get more ideas on the Zip Sauce Facebook page.

Zip Sauce is a thumbs up. You can get that yummy gourmet drizzle sauce that is hard to create at home, unless you spend a lot of time working on it. Then, you can play around and try Zip Sauce other ways as well. I wouldn't go heavy if not cutting the sauce with butter as directed, but it does work well as a flavor splash on meat. I'm sure other will come up with other interesting ways to use this new bottled base sauce. Share the word if you come up with something good.