Copycat 57 Sauce — The Sauce You Keep on Hand When the Ribs Are Already This Good

The Mountain West ceremony is two weekends away. Sarah at the press emailed me Tuesday with the schedule. I am not going to win — I am, statistically, one of five, and the odds are what they are — but I am going. I have written my thirty-second remarks for the case I do win. Sarah said I should write them just in case. I wrote them in five minutes Wednesday morning. They are: Thanks to my parents, Patrick and Colleen, who taught me what to put on a plate. Thanks to my friend Derek Owens, who is not here, and who would have laughed at me being up here. Thanks to Sarah and the press for taking a chance on a quiet book. Thanks to the readers. That is the whole speech. Sarah said it was good. She said, You will not need to use it. I said, I know. The not needing to use it is fine. The having it is the part that matters.

Patrick has been steady on the new regimen. Not back to October but steady. He sat at the kitchen table Wednesday and finished his McCarthy book. He started a Steinbeck I had given him three Christmases ago and that he had not picked up. He is reading. Reading is a sign he is feeling himself. Reading is a thing he stops doing when he is not feeling himself. The week was a reading week. We are taking it.

Tara is twenty-seven weeks. She is starting to show in a way that strangers comment on. Cole said the postal worker congratulated her last week as he handed her a package. Tara had not been sure how to feel about it — she does not love unsolicited commentary about her body, even friendly — but she said the package was the new bassinet she had ordered and so it had been a good day overall.

I shod two horses Tuesday and one Friday. The Tuesday job was a tough one — a young gelding that had been mishandled and that had not been touched in his back feet in eight months. We took an hour on each back foot. The owner was apologetic. I said, I am paid by the hour. He paid me. The gelding was sound when we were done and was leading better by the end than at the beginning, which is sometimes the larger part of the work — not the shoeing, but the standing-still training, which is half of horsemanship at its simplest level.

Cooked Sunday a beef short rib braise. Six pounds of bone-in short ribs from the cull cow I had butchered in October. Salted overnight, browned hard, braised four hours in the Dutch oven with onions and carrots and a head of garlic and a bottle of red wine I do not drink but use. The result was bone-falling-apart meat with a sauce so rich you could spread it on bread. We ate the ribs over polenta Mom had made — coarse polenta cooked slow with butter and parmesan, the way it is supposed to be cooked, which is for an hour with constant stirring. Mom did the polenta. I did the ribs. Patrick had two ribs. Mom had a rib and a half. I had two and a half. The leftovers became Tuesday dinner. The bones went into the stockpot Monday morning and produced a quart of beef stock that will become French onion soup next week.

Saturday cookout was nine men. Marcus made one hundred twenty-nine days, the longest he has ever gone in his adult life by twenty-five days. He is now solidly into territory he has never seen. The view is new. He told me Saturday by the fire, You start to look at things differently. I said, Yeah. You do. He said, How long until it stops being weird. I said, Some of it never stops being weird. The first beautiful sunset you watch sober — that one is weird forever. The first time you laugh hard with a clear head, that is weird forever. He said, Okay. He said, That is good news, kind of. I said, Yeah. The fire was good. The ribs leftover were good. The week was steady. The award is two weeks. The baby is three. The work is the work.

The ribs did not need a sauce — four hours in a Dutch oven with a bottle of red wine and a head of garlic takes care of that — but Patrick asked Tuesday when we reheated the leftovers whether there was anything to dip, and I realized I had never made a proper 57-style sauce from scratch. It seemed like the right week to try something steady and uncomplicated, something that comes together in a saucepan while the rest of the meal handles itself. The kind of recipe that rewards patience without demanding it.

Copycat 57 Sauce

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 16 (about 1 cup total)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 3 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon orange juice
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon celery salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Instructions

1. Combine and simmer. Add all ingredients to a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir well to combine, then bring to a gentle simmer.
2. Cook down. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 20–25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the raisins are very soft and the sauce has thickened slightly.
3. Blend smooth. Transfer the sauce to a blender or use an immersion blender and process until completely smooth, about 30–60 seconds.
4. Adjust and cool. Taste and adjust seasoning — add a pinch more cayenne for heat or a splash more vinegar for tang. Let cool to room temperature before serving.
5. Store. Transfer to a glass jar or squeeze bottle. Refrigerate for up to 3 weeks. Flavor deepens after the first day.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 20 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 5g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 115mg