Introducing: Barbecue Running Gel
It's time to smoke the competition.
I have never been athletically inclined. In fact, I avoid inclines as a rule. I believe rest is for the wicked, and I count myself among them.
What I do have is a menacing blend of curiosity and obstinance. And so a few years ago, when a friend asked me to sign up for a half-marathon, I was dogged immediately by two intrusive thoughts:
I don’t think I’ve run a single mile in my life.
And:
What if I ran…a lot of them?
This was how I came to learn about running gels for the first time in my thirties.
Running gels are joyless oozes that serve many biological purposes and no aesthetic ones. They are the closest thing humanity has produced to the cockroach bricks from Snowpiercer. They are named dystopian names—“GU,” “Hüma”—and come in flavors like “Chocolate Outrage” and “Watermelon Knife-Fight.” The variety is an illusion. Every running gel tastes the same, which is to say, like a Tootsie Roll that someone made wet.
Long-time readers know that I am morally opposed to anything that maximizes utility. I believe in aesthetic and hedonic excess as a rule. Still, a body has its limits. And when a body runs certain distances—for me, that’s anything over eight miles—that body cries out for Nutrient Paste™.
I set out to improve on the model. It was not, I concluded, too much to ask that a food be both delicious and suited to my fast-paced modern lifestyle. This was the promise of Go-gurt.
Plus, running nutrition is simple. All you really need is sodium, some amino acids, and a lot of simple carbohydrates—ideally, in the form of highly processed and bioavailable sugars.
What you need is something like barbecue sauce.
For the past 12 years, I’ve lived in Kansas City, Missouri, a city known largely for eating barbecue, winning Super Bowls, and encouraging our residents to date Taylor Swift.1 And for the past 12 months, I have been accumulating rib bones from 23 different Kansas City barbecue joints and stashing them in a bag in my freezer.
I didn’t start out saving them with any particular end goal in mind—like all people, I simply wished to amass a pile of bones. But I knew it was time to call upon them. I needed a base of amino acids and electrolytes. I was going to get them from the mother of all stocks.
I threw a little over two pounds of bones into my InstantPot and covered them with water. An hour later, I had some of the smokiest, saltiest, most collagen-heavy stock I’d ever tasted. I chilled it overnight to what food scientists call “the Jell-O stage,” then combined it with equal parts powdered maltodextrin—the simple carb of choice in most running gels—and bottled barbecue sauce from Gates. (This was a considered choice. The cashiers at Gates are notorious for yelling at people, and I figured this could only fuel me on a run.)
The resulting mixture tasted like slightly thicker, more complex barbecue sauce, which it was. The only thing it was missing was the running gel texture. Maltodextrin has some thickening power, but not enough to yield the paste-like consistency athletes crave.
I ended up augmenting the mixture with xanthan gum, which is one of a few Mysterious Powders I recommend all cooks (and Cooks) keep on hand. The uses are endless. A tiny pinch will get you silky hot sauces and emulsified salad dressings. A large pinch will get you culinary Flubber.
I had my gel. I used my vacuum sealer to make a hasty, GU-sized pouch and then slipped it into my pocket for a long run at English Landing Park.
The park was another considered choice. A while back, I had attempted to run the trail system with my friend Elizabeth (no relation) mere hours after housing a pound of Night Goat barbecue. This turned out to be what gastroenterologists call “a bad idea.” I will spare you the full report and skip to the key takeaway: if you find yourself in English Landing Park, don’t go off trail.
I needed to redeem myself. And so, like a decaying salmon sprinting toward its spawning grounds, I returned to the scene of the crime.
About eight miles into the run, I paused at the exact copse of trees I had once desecrated and downed the gel. It was savory. It was smoky. It tasted like a brisket that someone had made wet.
Deep within my stomach, I heard the muffled voice of a Gates cashier admonishing me to pick up a tray. I sped up.
Every now and then, someone will accuse me of using this newsletter for culinary “stunts.” I’m not offended by the insinuation—if I wanted to be taken seriously, I wouldn’t be licking mouse tape or making garlic bread chapstick. But I do want to be clear that I never engage in these experiments with anything but genuine curiosity and optimism. Taste is subjective, sure, but it’s also curated. Disgust is a reflex, and it’s one we can unlearn.
And as experiments go, I consider this one an unmitigated success. Running gels taste bad; barbecue tastes better.
Let the record show that I am willing to meet with investors. They’ll have to catch me first.
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Kansas City! We can do anything, as long as it doesn’t involve ferrying our residents cheaply and efficiently from place to place.
Bones for the bone queen.
Hahahahahaha