Pee Dee man cooks up new sauce

Albert “Uncle Albert” Johnson is 63 and has been cooking all his life. But about seven years ago, he got into the “sauce.” He hasn’t been the same since.

Johnson could never find any type of barbecue sauce that he liked. And that was almost fatal to a man of his ilk.

After all, he designed and built a huge “hog coffin” to barbecue hogs, ribs, chicken and anything else he could find. That was eight years ago.

But he has yet to use the coffin because he hasn’t received a large enough order to bother with firing it up.

And there was still the matter of the “just right” kind of barbecue sauce.

So Johnson took things into his own hands. He turned a shed behind his house into a creative kitchen.

He stocked it with tomato paste, vinegar, corn syrup, water, mustard seed, salt, dehydrated onion, garlic powder, tumeric, peppers spices from the spice islands, oleo resin, paprika, hickory smoke, xantham gum and lots of other goodies.

And, like a chemist, he started mixing and mixing while quoting a little “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble” from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”

About a year later, he finally shouted “eureka” because the toil and trouble had come to fruition. He had invented Uncle Albert’s Famous Bar-B-Que Sauce.

And he named the product in memory of his mother, Mabel H. Johnson. She taught him just about everything he knows that deals with cooking.

Johnson started distributing the sauce in plastic, one-quart containers. It caught on and is selling well.

But three years ago, a clarion call came out for a hotter version.

And the call wasn’t from strapping men, it was from “little old ladies,” Johnson said. They wanted some heat in their barbecue sauce to spice up their lives.

So Johnson went back to the drawing board in his backyard kitchen, which now features state-of-the-art stainless steel equipment.

He finally came up with a hotter, “red” version this summer. He’s hoping it will sell right along with the mild sauce.

He’s confident his mother would approve.

“I went through a big depression when Momma died,” he said. “I wanted to do something that would make her proud of me. I know she’s looking down on me now and smiling, especially when she sees me going to the bank.”

Johnson doesn’t forget his church, Macedonia Baptist, either. He takes a couple of bottles every Sunday for the members to have.

And when he leaves Macedonia, he goes down the street to his wife’s church, Bethel AME. He’s a little late, but the Bethel parishioners are used to him coming in during the services because they know how fired up a Baptist can get.

Johnson’s son, Albert Jr., and a nephew are the only ones who know his secret barbecue sauce recipe. His son is a Citadel graduate and a chemist in Tampa, Fla.

“No female members of the family know the recipe,” he said without elaborating.

It’s hog-killing time, and Johnson said he is selling a great deal of his sauce. He also does plenty of mail-order business.

And what does he use when he’s cooking his own succulent barbecue?

“The only way to cook barbecue is over charcoal or oak wood,” he said.

For more information about Uncle Albert’s Famous Bar-B-Que Sauce, call (843) 393-2989.