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Many years ago I was stationed in Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base (AFB) in Anchorage, Alaska on the shore of Cook Inlet as an Airman First Class (just a “two-striper”) in the Air Force Commissary Service (AFCOMS). To say that we were poor is an understatement! My former husband had served in the Strategic Air Command as a Missile Facility Technician–fancy dark blue uniforms with a red cravat–only to leave the Air Force and find out that there was no civilian counterpart for pushing buttons and turning keys to fire off missiles! Who knew?!

Consequently, he was most often hired on as a temporary day laborer in construction. While working one of those jobs he was taken to a local Mom and Pop drive up burger dive on Muldoon Road and fed by his co-workers and came home all pumped up about the joint’s “secret sauce.” Several weeks later, the guys pulled up to the drive up only to be told by the owners that they were closing up shop and returning to the “lower 48” (Alaska-speak for the continental United States) on that very day–before the Alaskan winter set in!

Like I said, we were truly poor and I remember celebrating having a single dollar left on the day before payday and being able to walk from the Commissary to the Exchange (foregoing lunch) to buy a teeny tiny English Ivy plant to “decorate” our living room–so “fashionably” furnished with thrift store bedspreads over lawn chairs and a 1940s era red “mahogany” china cabinet loaned to us by the Air Force! It should be noted that we certainly didn’t own a single piece of china–only a set of Melmac plates that his mother had given us–so our single “fancy” piece of furniture had exactly six knickknacks pulled to the front of the shelves so that they looked bigger! (You can’t make this stuff up!) So, while I heard about the burgers we certainly did not have the resources to indulge in drive-in food–no matter how delicious…and “secret sauce” mysterious!

I am told that it was a suddenly solemn group of rough neck laborers that waited outside in their trucks for their very last “secret sauce” anointed burgers.  As the conversation began to drift toward alternative choices in Anchorage’s burger joints an underlying thread of panic began to run through the group as they faced the realization that none of the alternatives had a single distinguishing flavor profile–let alone the revered “secret sauce.”  Eventually, one of them sucked it up and climbed out of the truck and went to the drive-up’s window to ask the owners if they would/could possibly share the recipe for that secret sauce. The owners’ actual response is now a murky memory but I am told that at least part of it was “hell no!”

It was at this point that my former husband spoke up and offered me up as the one person that could taste that burger and almost certainly ascertain at least the foundation for the mystic secrets of the “secret sauce.” Understand, I am sure that it was a stretch for these guys to buy him lunch–to buy his wife lunch was truly a fiscal stretch especially with an uncertain outcome that this military chick could deliver the ingredients just by tasting. After all, we must all remember, that they had eaten a ton of the things over the course of that summer and not one of them had a clue where to begin!

You can only imagine my surprise when I was called to the ID desk of the Elmendorf Commissary only to be greeted by a gaggle of dirty (and entirely desperate at this point) construction workers proffering a greasy bag containing one of the very, very last secret sauce burgers that would ever be sold in the great state of Alaska. A true treasure (and testament to my former husband’s ability to b.s. his way out of a paper bag) when measured against resources available versus associated risk that the entire exercise was a colossal waste of $2 and the very, very last such burger that any of them would ever be able to eat!

Amongst some very serious construction workers and growing crowd of laughing active duty military–I took my first bite of burger nirvana! Only to take a couple of chews and tell them, “For crying out loud, guys, this is only mayonnaise and barbecue sauce combined!”

It’s been many years and at least a thousand-times-repeated story but my family still refers to the sauce as “secret sauce” and literally demands it’s preparation for any burger or hearty sandwich on my menu!

Thanks to food crazed construction workers willing to risk it all for the possibility of gaining the ingredients of a treasured sauce from a now long shuttered burger joint drive-up on Muldoon Road! Without their “roll of the dice,” I would not have developed this recipe for a long standing favorite of my friends and family! After all, if those owners hadn’t refused to give up the recipe–I would never have tasted “Muldoon Road’s Secret Sauce!”

Muldoon Road’s Secret Sauce

Proportion of ingredients is key here and the quality of ingredients is paramount to consistent success!

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise (I use Duke’s–preferably–or Hellmann’s…only)

1/3 cup brown sugar/hickory barbecue sauce (I use “Sweet Baby Ray’s” Brown Sugar Hickory…only)

Whisk until well mixed and store in airtight container. Slather liberally on my Smokehouse brisket sandwiches, burgers, panini’s, etc.

Keeps deliciously wonderful for weeks in the fridge–unless, of course, you can’t keep a “secret” and folks find out that it’s there!