David Crigger|Bristol Herald Courier: Lynn Tipton stands besides one of the numerous smokers at his home. He brews his barbecue sauce, Tipton's Pride, in a 100-gallon vat.
Local Pride
Lynn Tipton One Of Many Mountain Chefs Cooking Up Sauces, More
Sunday, May 04, 2008 - 12:00 AM
BY Tom Netherland |
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Printer FriendlyJams and jellies and preserves. Barbecue, hot and mild sauces, too.
Oh, there’s more.
So it goes within the Mountain Empire. Creativity extends from tunes to the table throughout Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.
Let’s shelve music herein and focus on food made locally. A bounty of belly-filling nourishments created by moms and pops offer purchase and palate alternatives to shoppers. Too many to mention them all, let’s instead crack the cupboards on one of the region’s finer examples made by one colorful character.
Spotlight please, on Tipton’s Pride.
Created and owned by Lynn Tipton, the imprint features three barbecue sauces – mild, tangy and hot – along with a steak sauce.
“There’s nothing like it in the world,” Tipton said, ever-present grin as broad as the 100-gallon vat in which he brews his sauce.
Tipton offers more than sauce. He sells varieties of meat, beans, caters events large and small, and includes a plate full of humor and good cheer with each order filled.
Take the leg he lost during an accident more than 30 years ago.
“I asked them, ‘Will I be able to dance?’ They said, ‘Why, shore.’ I said, ‘Well, I never have before!’ ” Tipton said as he slapped his knees and roared in laughter.
TO TIPTON’S
Drive out to Tipton’s home and place of business. The address indicates and officially is Johnson City, but there’s nothing city-like about Tipton’s stomping grounds.
Several turns beyond an Elizabethton city limits sign. Hit a road with more curves than Jessica Simpson, and motor past more barns and cows than people. A horseshoe toss from the Cherokee National Forest sits Tipton’s home and place of business.
You can’t see it from the road. A Tipton’s Pride sign above a “sold here” direction points to the place, and up and up you go to get there. Ah, but when his homemade log house and “factory” come into sight, what a sight.
Welcome to Tipton’s haven in the hills.
“I live on top of the mountain,” Tipton said, smiling and leaning in closer. “I’ve owned a timeshare in Gatlinburg for 16 years. I’ve been there one time.”
Drive out to see Tipton’s slice of heaven to see exactly why.
“I’m 40 and plumb – 40 miles from anything and plumb back in the sticks,” Tipton said, capped with a laugh as large as the mountain on which he lives.
WELCOME
Tipton sauntered out of a small area in a large log building just behind and to the side of his large log house. He grinned like a neighbor seeing a long lost neighbor. Fast as a gunslinger’s draw, he extended a hand. Friend.
“Welcome,” Tipton said, and swept an arm about the place.
Tipton brews his sauces in space about the size of a one-car garage. Cases of brewed, labeled and packed sauces are stacked in the forefront. Just behind them, a 100-gallon vat awaited another round of sauce to make.
“It cooks for approximately four hours at 250 degrees,” Tipton said. “I do about 300 gallons per day.”
Through a back door and passageway, Tipton lead the way into an adjoining room, also about the size of a one-car garage. Several large cookers, which he employs in his catering business, rest alongside a large stack of wood.
The sweetly smoky smell of cherry wood is downright heavenly.
“I smoke my hams with wild cherry wood,” Tipton said. “It gives it a sweeter taste. Hams, tenderloins and all – every bit of the meat I do is done with wild cherry wood.”
Grown on the mountain. Cooked on the mountain. And oh, that smell on the mountain.
“I’ve got a brother who lives down on the main road, and when I fire them up and they start smoking, the smell goes all down through the valley,” Tipton said as he stood in front of his largest cooker. “It will hold 100 hams.”
Move upstairs. Tipton’s catering business extends to a space that can accommodate about 60 to 65 diners.
“Church groups use it sometimes, basketball teams, baseball teams,” Tipton said.
That includes the ownership of the Major League Baseball team the Minnesota Twins. He won’t say exactly when they come for visits, only that they come each year.
“They love it here,” Tipton said. “They can get away here. There’s anonymity.”
No doubt about that.
And then there’s the meat. And the sauces.
Mercy.
SAUCE
Visit Bass Pro Shops. Drive out toward Watauga, Tenn., and peruse the local products-stocked shelves of St. John Mill. Stop by any one of the 30-some White’s Supermarkets.
Browse any of those businesses, and Tipton’s sauces occupy shelf space. Numerous area restaurants use his sauces.
Try one. His sauces taste rich, though are not overbearing. They are sweet, yet include no added sugar. Unlike typical barbecue sauce, Tipton’s sauces can easily be slathered on way more than just barbecue.
“You can put it on french fries, hamburgers, baked potatoes and all kinds of vegetables,” Tipton said as his eyes widened. “Let me tell you. Just put a little on a piece of shrimp and honey, it’ll make your tongue slap your brain!”
Add a belly-shaking laugh from the man absolutely proud of his product, and you have a picture of the moment.
More about sauce in a moment. Let’s look at the man.
TIPTON
Lynn Tipton stood on the wide stone porch of his handmade log house and nodded before him, toward rolling hills covered in trees.
“I was born right over the hill there,” Tipton said on the day before his 65th birthday.
Meet Tipton, and he will surprise most anyone.
He lost his right leg on Dec. 27, 1977, when he got tangled in a corn picker. He uses a prosthetic leg, walks with a slight limp and yet works like a man for whom the words “quit” and “can’t” were long ago deleted from his vocabulary.
Tipton built his log house from logs cut on site. He cut them. He made sense of them and built the house over four years. He designed the house.
“There’s no blueprint for any of this,” Tipton said while standing before a massive stone fireplace in his living room. “I drew a little sketch on a piece of old linoleum I had discarded. That’s the blueprint to my house.”
He speaks wonderful mountain language – “wash” becomes “worsh,” “morning” becomes “mornin’ ” and such – but don’t let that fool anyone.
He earned four degrees – an undergraduate from Milligan College, a master’s degree from University of Tennessee, a doctorate in industrial technology from East Tennessee State University and a graduate degree from Auburn University.
“I’ve got four degrees,” Tipton said later as he rubbed his head and rocked back to laugh, surrounded by cases of sauce, “and I sit here and make sauce.”
The first sparks of an idea for barbecue sauce brewed in Tipton’s brain 32 years ago. He was working as a chemist for Nuclear Fuels in Erwin, Tenn. Each year, they had a company cookout, Tipton said.
“I would kill some hogs and make some sauce,” he said. “Then I worked on it, and each year the sauce changed a little bit.”
Time passed. Tipton changed gears in his career and became a schoolteacher.
“I taught school for 25 years,” Tipton said. “I taught building trades at Elizabethton High School and Unaka High School. Every year, I’d kill a couple of hogs at the end of the year just for my students.”
More time passed, and Tipton’s gradually perfecting sauce neared the product that’s now available.
SAUCE SUCCESS
Married to his wife Jean for 38 years, Tipton said that as time passed, and he tinkered with his sauces that she was the one who finally said stop, you have it.
“It was in 1998,” Tipton said. “When my wife said don’t change anything else, I didn’t. She said do not add or take away anything. I didn’t. It has not been changed since.”
Consumers can purchase Tipton’s Pride sauces from several sources, including such locally owned businesses as St. John Mill near Watauga. Folks can also buy the sauces and meat directly from Tipton.
“Business is good,” he said. “It keeps me hopping all the time.”
His sauces are also sold locally in White’s Supermarkets, though under the Simple Comforts name, which are exactly the same sauce as Tipton’s Pride. And for those who have bought a bottle of Simple Comforts, yes, that’s Tipton’s picture on the label.
“I really don’t know how much I sell,” Tipton said. “Whenever it gets low, I just make another 100-gallon batch.”
That amount is about to change – enormously. Tipton said that Carnival Cruise Lines is about to buy and exclusively use his barbecue sauce. He currently uses a 100-gallon vat in which to cook his sauces, though not for much longer.
“I’ve got a 5,000-gallon vat coming next month,” Tipton said. “That will cost me about $65,000.”
Yet even as Tipton’s sauces take off, he holds to the simple truths of what has made them successful.
“I don’t know of any other barbecue sauce that does not have brown sugar in it,” he said. “This does not have any brown or cane sugar in it. This has no preservatives. Everything that goes in it is natural.”
OK, natural and sans preservatives, great. No added sugar, fantastic. But taste matters most, without which he probably couldn’t sell to a rowboat full of folks, much less a cruise line packed with patrons.
“It’s a distinct taste all its own,” Tipton said. “I’ve put my whole heart and soul in it. I take pride in my sauce.”
Hence the name, Tipton’s Pride.
“It was my pride,” he said. “I take pride in my work. This is my pride. This is the Tennessee special. This is Tipton’s style barbecue sauce. It’s the only one of its kind.”
‘I YAM WHAT I YAM’
Tipton also takes his sauce – in his truck, in his car, wherever he goes.
“If we go to Outback or someplace like that, I’ll take my sauce with me,” Tipton said. “I’ll show you.”
He got up from his seat, walked to the back of his pickup truck, reached inside and produced a jar from a half-empty case, and smiled that Tipton smile.
“I’ve got eight vehicles, and they all have a case of sauce in it,” he said. “Honey, I’m not kidding you.”
No indeed.
And then he broke out with a belly-whopping laugh. So infectious he could make the saddest of folks set aside the sad and grab a hold of the humor in life.
Lynn Tipton, man of meat and sauces and more importantly – life-loving – could give Santa a run on the meaning of jolly.
“I’m a sweet potato person,” Tipton said, grinning wide and with hands on his knees. “I yam what I yam. That’s me in a nutshell.”
YOU SHOULD KNOW
Tipton’s Pride: 198 Angus Hill Road, Johnson City, Tenn., (423) 232-6038
Products: Barbecue and steak sauce, variety of meats including pulled beef and ribs and tenderloin, catering
MORE LOCALLY MADE PRODUCTS
Austin Springs Jellorium: Johnson City, Tenn., (423) 282-3355, www.jellorium.com
Products: Jelly, jam, butter, marmalade, etc.
Das Jam Haus: Limestone, Tenn., (423) 257-3460
Products: Jams and jellies, including sugar-free jam and jelly
Don’s Best Sauces: Ridgeway, Va., (276) 252-6225 and (276) 956-1235
Products: Variety of sauces
Johnson Sweet Sorghum: Limestone, Tenn., (423) 257-4238
Products: Sorghum
Nancy’s Homemade Fudge: Meadows of Dan, Va., (800) 328-3834 and (276) 952-2112, www.nancyshomemadefudge.com
Products: Fudge, truffles, hard candy
Tony Slaughter Farms: 180 Fordtown Road, Kingsport, Tenn., (423) 239-6700 and (423) 817-1988
Products: Farm fresh pork, whole hog sausage, tenderloins, backbones, ribs
Woodsgift Farm: Greeneville, Tenn., (423) 234-5532
Products: Jam, jelly, ice cream and pancake toppings; pancake, biscuit, cookie, scone and shortbread mixes
ALSO
www.localgoods.org
Reader Reaction:
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Posted May 05, 2008 @ 10:06 PM by Bob Cox
I really enjoyed eating at his place of business,and really enjoyed his Tipton's Pride Pork Barbecue sauces, all three of them. I also have them in our home. THERE G-R-E-A-T-T-T-T. Bob Cox Br. TN.
