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As the three-day 21st Annual Great San Juan Bautista Rib Cookoff comes to a close on May 10, Jon Mansmith reflected on his first experience at a big grilling event over 60 years ago when, as a high school student, he helped out at the long-gone and much-mourned San Juan Fiesta Rodeo.
“I asked Zeke Diaz, who was in charge, if I could come down and help,” Mansmith said. “And he told me, “You never have to ask to help. If you want to help, just show up.” So I started showing up. You went around 4 or 5 p.m. the night before.”
However, it was not his first try at the art of grilling. That would have been his disastrous attempt, while still in grammar school, of trying to light a fire in a brick barbecue near his home.
“I took an aluminum pipe pan full of gasoline,” he said, “and then built my wood up around it. I threw a match in there and blew up with wood all over the yard. So I had the idea, but I had to refine it.”
One of Mansmith’s tasks at the rodeo cookout sowed the seeds of his spice product line. As the chicken was cooking, he said, someone would grab a handful of seasoning from a coffee can and “sling” it across the grill. It was Mansmith’s job to keep that coffee can full.
“They’d send me into the Padre’s kitchen,” he said, “to mix up another batch of salt, pepper and oregano. That’s all they used to put. Just salt, pepper, and oregano. They kept saying, “Use more salt so we’ll sell more beer.”
The first product Mansmith created to sell, years later, was his barbecue paste. As he explained, for a previous BenitoLink article, the concoction was a happy accident, created in 1990 after someone forgot the barbecue sauce for the pork chops at an awards dinner at the Hollister Elk’s Club.
He was preparing the pork chops. He went into the kitchen and “hauled out 10 cans of this, jars of this, and jugs of that.” The mixture, he said, was an immediate hit.
Around the same time, his tinkering with his own spice mix reached a point of perfection.
“I made up a blend one night,” he said, “and I really like it. The difference was that it had garlic powder, onion powder and more herbs. I always liked Italian herbs, so I put in as many as I could find in my cabinet. And that’s what I used for all of my barbecuing.”
Wanting to sell the barbecue paste, Mansmith found that stores would not give them shelf space unless they had two products to sell. The spice mixture was the obvious choice, and they used both in their first marketing ploy.
“We decided to do tri-tip sandwiches at the San Juan Antiques Festival,” Mansmith said. More to demonstrate our products than to sell food. They were just little bitty things; we just had a piece of garlic bread and a couple of pieces of tri-tip on it. And we gave them away.”
The catch, Mansmith said, was that these small sliders were supposed to be a come-on for the other two products: one booth handed them out, and the adjacent booth sold barbecue paste and spices.
The samples were a hit, but it did not help move the products and sales foundered. To add to the complications, people were asking for a second piece of garlic bread to top the slider sample.
“Suddenly,” Mansmith said, “we were giving away sandwiches, and it was getting pretty expensive. We weren’t selling as much spice. So finally, we switched to selling them because that’s what everybody wanted.”
Undeterred, Mansmith switched to the grilling operation as we see it today, with appearances at events and a regular schedule on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 7 p.m. at 2410 Airline Highway in Hollister. And he continued to create new spices, bringing the total to an even dozen.
According to his granddaughter, Carrie Mansmith, Jon’s process for creating new spices is methodical to the point of being mathematical.
“It’s a science experiment,” she said. “He has a background in chemistry, and everything’s a ratio. There’s method behind the madness. He has notepads and notepads and notepads. Once he gets close, the whole family is in the kitchen, tasting and critiquing.”
Jon has brought the product line up to 12 different spices, along with two barbecue sauces, Original and “Sticky,” and a barbecue paste. Mansmith products are available directly from the company, Mansmith Gourmet and online resellers like Amazon.
Locally, they can be found at stores like Windmill Market (sponsor of the “Eat, Drink, Savor” series) and Bertuccio’s Market, but Carrie, who works in marketing and design for the company, said it can be a struggle to get the products into most corporate retail stores.
Even if a product sells well, she said, maintaining shelf space can be difficult because stores often require companies to pay for that space. At one point, a large display at a Hollister store was reduced because the store could generate more profit by selling the shelf space to another vendor.
“At the end of the day,” Carrie said, “we are a corporation, but it’s just our family. It’s not like there’s a whole bunch of us. We’re not McCormack out here. We’re not Kraft.”
With his faithful dozen spices, most of which are based on his original spice blend, Jon continues experimenting with new flavors and has five ready to produce as soon as the Food and Drug Administration approves the labeling and appropriate colors are chosen for the designs.
They include a coffee rub (“That one took a minute to develop,” Jon said), a sriracha, an otherwise unnamed “competition spice,” a taco seasoning (“The best taco seasoning I’ve had,” said Carrie) and a lemon pepper, which, in particular, symbolizes the no-fillers, no-artificial-flavors approach Jon takes in creating his seasonings.
“You go into the grocery store,” he said, “and look at lemon pepper, and they’ve got dextrose and everything else in there. So your lemon pepper is maybe only a third of what’s there, and the rest is just junk, including salt. Mine is just lemon and pepper, damn it. That’s it.”
“I think what he likes about the work,” she said, “is when somebody tells him how great his spices are and how much they enjoy it. It just makes him feel good to know that something he’s created is being appreciated by someone else.”
Mansmith, modestly, says that when he thinks about the success of his business, “you’ve got to put God in the mix,” but there is a distinct pride when he talks about the impact he has had in the food industry.
“When I first entered an international competition,” he said, “the original grilling spice was voted best on the planet from thousands. The next year, I sent the low-sodium version of the same stuff, and it came out number one again. Little San Juan Bautista, taking home big awards.”
Select spices from Mansmith’s
The Original – The hands-down best seller, particularly in the 29 oz. size. It combines kosher salt, pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano and basil. This is the above-mentioned “best on the planet” and the spice used on all of the tri-tip available from the weekly barbecue and farmers market appearances. “That’s the foundation,” Jon said, “We use the original on everything.”
Dry Fire: Made with kosher salt, black pepper, red pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion, cumin, cilantro, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano and basil. “I wanted a little heat in there,” Jon said, “so I developed a couple of hot seasonings. It’s kind of a southwestern blend, kind of creole.”
Wildfire: Made with black pepper, chili pepper, habanero pepper, oleoresin capsicum oil, kosher salt, granulated garlic, granulated onion and curry. “I developed this one,” he said, “because I was thinking, ‘You want hot? Damn it, I’ll make it hotter.’ The resin is a pepper extract which can be gotten in any strength, up to ‘kill yourself,’ like a million.”
Low Sodium Original: The same ingredients as the Original, but with 65% less salt. “The original one is too salty for some people,” Jon said, “I sent this one to the same competition as the original, and it came out number one.”
Garlic Stuff: A bread seasoning with granulated garlic, paprika, parsley and granulated onion. “Unlike other companies,” Jon said, “this one is salt-free. It has parsley for color and threw some paprika in it, too, so it would brown that bread a little nicer.”
Cinnamon Stuff: Made with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and vanilla. “I didn’t want it to just be cinnamon sugar,” Jon said. “So I added more stuff because I always figure the more the merrier.”
Crusting Rub: The same ingredients as the original, with the addition of bay, but uses coarse-ground salt, pepper and garlic to create a thick crust on the grill. Carrie suggests adding it to olive oil and balsamic vinegar to make a “killer” marinade or a bread dipping sauce.
Fish and Seafood: a low-sodium item made with pepper, dill, parsley, thyme, rosemary, basil, potassium chloride, kosher salt, granulated garlic, granulated onion, citrus zest, and citric acid. “There’s enough dill in there that you can see it,” Jon said. “It’s on the lemony side of things, and it’s a low-sodium blend because people on a fish diet, they like low.”
Mansmith spices are available at local markets and specialty stores, including Windmill Market and Bertuccio’s Market, as well as online directly from Mansmith Gourmet.
Related stories
Eat, Drink, Savor: Mansmith’s Sticky BBQ Sauce has a successful debut
Eat, Drink, Savor: Mansmith’s BBQ prepares for Rib Cookoff
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
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