From barbecue competitions to farmers markets: The rise of Cracked Ribs Seasoning

Summer is a time for many things here in Southeast Missouri. The lake, family time, good cooking. One thing these usually have in common is barbecue, and there is a new barbecue spice company in Southeast Missouri that believes they have some of the best.

According to owner Bill Johns of Oak Ridge, Cracked Ribs Seasoning started selling to the public in August. However, Johns did not start his barbecue spice creation just last year, but back in 2008.

Johns said he got into a barbecue contest years ago with some friends and their team name was Crack Ribs Barbeque. While doing competitions, he decided that if they were going to compete, he wanted to use their own spices and sauces to win. From there, Johns said he started looking at cookbooks for information on how others made theirs. After working for a few months on weekends came his brainchild of Cracked Ribs Seasoning

At first, there was just one sauce, the Original, but because his young daughter didn’t enjoy the spiciness of it, Johns created the Sweet seasoning. And when some friends asked for spicy, the Spicy seasoning was born.

Johns said he has won several times with his spice creation since 2008, competing in barbecue contests in Cape Girardeau, Oran, Perryville, Kansas the Jack Daniels Invitational, and more, and one occasion they were crowned the overall winner.

Johns said his girlfriend was the one who told him he needed to quit giving away his spices and to try to sell them to the public

“We found out all the legal parts of selling and found out we can sell our seasoning face to face but cannot sell the sauce (because of the requirements of commercial kitchens). As long as we sell face to face we are fine as of now for seasonings. So we started going to some of these farmers markets in Marble Hill, Chaffee and Cape to sell. We now also go to the downtown Cape one as well,” Johns said about his spices

Having to sell face to face does get difficult at times, but Johns said they make it work by meeting customers at their houses or in their towns to get the seasoning into their hands.

Cracked Ribs is not able to sell the barbecue sauce just yet but Johns said they are in the works of talking to a bottling company in St. Louis and he is hoping in a few months they will be able to have Cracked Ribs Seasoning and sauce on the shelves of some stores.

With making all their products in-house, a lot of time goes into each bottle. Johns said they make what they call a triple batch at a time and said, from start to finish, the batch takes about two hours until it’s bottled and sealed up. From each batch, 24 of the smaller 6- ounce bottles can be made, or a dozen of the bigger bottles. Johns said once Cracked Ribs Seasoning is working with the bottling company, it will be able to sell half-gallon and gallon- sized barbecue sauce as well as the smaller sizes.

When Johns is cooking for himself, he said he is still partial to the Original for most meats, but when he is cooking chicken wings, he goes for the Spicy sauce. He said he is looking to make new flavors such as a honey barbecue and a jalapeno flavor, but nothing is ready just yet.

For more information about Cracked Ribs Seasoning and where to find them selling, go to its Facebook page at Cracked Ribs Seasoning or email crseasonings@outlook. com.

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