Inside the regional styles of all-American barbecue sauce
Story and recipes by Catherine Neville, originally published in Feast Magazine, August 2017
What we know collectively as barbecue today was born of a centuries-old cultural collision: Spanish conquistadors’ European pigs and the indirect-heat cooking style favored by indigenous peoples living in the Caribbean and Florida. Barbecue sauce, a more modern culinary development, is intended to enhance (never overpower) the flavor of meat – traditionally pork, but in some parts of the country, beef or chicken or even mutton – that’s been cooked for a very long time over a low fire. (And contrary to popular belief, grilling is not barbecue. It’s an entirely different cooking style that involves high, direct heat rather than barbecue’s low and slow approach.) Some regions of the U.S. forgo sauce entirely, but for most, sauce is an integral part of the experience of eating barbecue, and evolved as the cooking style’s popularity spread across the American South.
The history of barbecue and the sauces created to accompany slow-smoked meats pulled from pits across the South reflects cultural and culinary migration across the continent. Vinegar is the unifying ingredient in each barbecue sauce, but it’s the tweaks those pitmasters made, starting from the first, elemental North Carolina vinegar-and-pepper mop sauce, that distinguishes each region’s saucy flavor.
Barbecue is distinctly American and distinctly Southern, but this cooking tradition is gaining followers across the world as well. Today, barbecue is heating up cities such as Paris, Brussels and Melbourne, Australia, with newly converted barbecue enthusiasts learning how to coax ideal flavor and tenderness from cuts of meat over a low and slow fire.
One can only wonder – and hope to taste – how our all-American barbecue sauces will continue to evolve as other cultures contribute to this rich and diverse culinary tradition.
Editor’s note: Barbecue reigns supreme in the South. You can find pitmasters standing over smoldering hardwoods from Missouri to the East Coast and into Texas and Florida. Not all states lay claim to the creation of a signature style of sauce, however. This article focuses on unique styles of barbecue sauce and where they came from, with the understanding that there are many, many regional variations and that the American barbecue tradition has proudly spread across the country.
In North Carolina, where many food scholars believe the use of barbecue sauce made its debut during the Colonial era, there are two main styles: Eastern and Lexington, or Western-style. Eastern-style sauce is made with vinegar and pepper, and Eastern-style barbecue is whole hog, where cuts from the entire pig are chopped together after cooking. Lexington-style “dip,” on the other hand, includes a dose of ketchup and is used mainly on pork shoulder. Which style is best is a topic of heated debate in North Carolina, but the state’s original barbecue sauce was the Eastern version, with Lexington being developed after the introduction of ketchup as an American condiment. One thing to note: Eastern-style sauce is often used as a mop sauce to baste the hog while it’s cooking. It’s also served as a dip on the side. Both styles of North Carolina sauce can be found drizzled on barbecued pork that’s been piled on a soft white hamburger bun, dressed with a scoop of vinegary slaw. Get the recipe for a North Carolina-style mop sauce here.
A bit to the south, mustard is added to the Carolina region’s vinegar-focused sauces. Thanks to the influence of South Carolina’s German immigrants, the spicy, complex condiment lends its heat and bite to local recipes. You can find a number of sauces on offer in the state, including sweet tomato-based varieties, but South Carolina is famous for its tangy mustard-based sauces, many of which include sugar to balance the acidity. As with all traditional Southern barbecue, pork is what’s on the plate here, not beef; you’ll find it chopped, pulled or sliced, served up with a slice of white bread and a squirt bottle of sauce on the side. Get the recipe for a South Carolina-style Mustard Sauce here.
As you move west into Tennessee and Alabama, barbecue sauces continue to change, reflecting generations of adaptation by local pitmasters. Parts of Alabama favor vinegary sauces akin to those from the Carolinas, or the tomato-tinged sauces found in Memphis, but in the northern part of the state, creamy mayonnaise-based sauces reign. There’s some debate as to the recipe’s origins: The general consensus is that Big Bob Gibson, who was a pitmaster in Decatur, Alabama, created the sauce in 1925, although there are some skeptics. Yet ’cue-lovers agree that this style of sauce was created to maintain optimal juiciness and enhance the flavor of smoky barbecued chicken. Today, people drizzle it on pulled pork shoulder as well, but back in the day, chicken legs, thighs and breasts were “baptized” in a bath of the stuff. Get the recipefor Alabama White Sauce here.
Even farther west, in Texas, beef is king. Here, cattle range on vast, open plains, and beef is the most popular type of meat at local barbecue joints, although pork and chicken also are found. Typically, when people refer to Texas barbecue, they’re referring to central Texas-style barbecue, which is brisket-focused. Salt and pepper are the only seasonings to be found on traditional Lone Star State ’cue, and traditionalists eat the tender smoked meat with their hands. Historically, Texas barbecue purists refuse offers of sauce, saying it masks the beef’s beefiness. Vinegar still plays a role in tempering the meat’s fattiness, though. Here, barbecue is served with tangy pickles, raw onions and slices of sweet white bread.
To the north, in western Kentucky, mutton is traditionally served. Not to be confused with lamb (or even goat), mutton is the meat of an adult sheep that’s more than a year old. Wool production increased in this part of the country after the Tariff of 1816 was passed, protecting U.S. businesses from overseas competition. This suddenly made wool more profitable, and the trade flourished. After the sheep aged and no longer gave high-quality wool, they were destined for the dinner table. Not typically found on American plates, mutton has a strong flavor and tough texture that benefits from a long, slow smoke and a sharp, vinegary, warmly spiced sauce. The region’s “black vinegar” sauce doesn’t contain actual black vinegar, which is an East Asian condiment. Rather, the inky color comes from a healthy dose of Worcestershire sauce, an anchovy funk that matches mutton deliciously. Notable in the following recipe is the lack of chiles: Unlike other barbecue sauces, the only heat found in Kentucky’s black vinegar sauce is from freshly ground black pepper. Get the recipe for Kentucky Black Vinegar Sauce here.
Heading up to Tennessee, you’ll find nuanced tomato-based sauces. The state is also home to paprika-spiked rubs, which are central to creating Memphis-style dry-rubbed ribs. The rub is applied prior to a long, slow smoke, and as the ribs’ fat breaks down, it mingles with the spices, creating a crust on the surface of the meat. In Memphis, pork ribs are most common, although chopped pork shoulder is beloved, too, and barbecue sauce is often served on the side (and sometimes not at all). When a sauce is served, it’s typically a vinegar-ketchup-mustard hybrid with a slight sweetness and a hint of heat. The sauce is thinner and tangier than its cousins in the Midwest, and completely optional, unlike the predominately wet style of barbecue found in Kansas City and St. Louis. Get the recipe for Memphis-style sauce here.
In Missouri, sweet heat takes center stage. Memphis-style sauce is the parent of the thick, sugar-tinged sauces favored here. Memphis recipes traveled up the Mississippi River, including one brought along by a man named Henry Perry, who moved to Kansas City in 1907 from a town near Memphis. (Perry founded the restaurant that eventually became Arthur Bryant’s; for a history of the Kansas City barbecue community, turn to p. 71.) This region’s thick, sweet sauce is typically drizzled (or, more frequently, slathered) directly on whatever’s been barbecued. Because Kansas City and St. Louis were both major geographic crossroads, that could be pork, beef or chicken. Likewise, sauce styles from every barbecue-loving region of the U.S. can be found in Missouri, but it’s the Memphis-influenced sauce that dominates. This style of sauce was bottled by St. Louisan Louis Maull in 1926, and then by H.J. Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods in the mid-20th century, with KC Masterpiece following in the ’70s. The nationwide proliferation of bottled Missouri-style sauce is the reason many Americans consider it to be the ideal barbecue sauce, even though this is the most recent style to have emerged. Get the recipe for Missouri-style sauce here.
Best Sauce on the Planet
Vinegar, Mild Tomato, Hot Tomato, Mustard, Specialty: Those are the five categories that have been established in the annual American Royal World Series of Barbecue Sauce Contest. One sauce out of all of the winners is crowned Best Sauce on the Planet each year.
In the late ’70s, Rich Davis, a piano prodigy-turned-child psychiatrist, created K.C. Soul Style BBQ Sauce (the now-famous brand KC Masterpiece), delivering bottles of the sauce to stores in his station wagon. He won Best Sauce on the Planet at the very first American Royal Barbecue Contest in 1980, and sold his sauce company to Kingsford Products Co., a division of Clorox, in 1986. Today, the sauce can be found on grocery-store shelves across the U.S.
This year, there were 606 entries in the sauce contest, coming in from 43 states and 13 countries. More than 150 additional entries were submitted this year than in 2016, reflecting the growing worldwide love of barbecue and its accompanying sauces. A panel of 70 judges certified by the organization evaluated the entries, and it was a vinegar sauce called Frog Sauce from Rob’s Smokin’ Rub in San Joaquin County, California, that won Best Sauce on the Planet.
“I got a phone call at 20 to 7am on a workday morning, saw that it was from Kansas City, Missouri, and knew that they were releasing the results that day,” says Rob Ryan, creator of Frog Sauce. “I thought the news was going to be either really good or really bad.”
It was good – really good. Ryan’s Sweet & Tangy had taken ninth place in the Vinegar category, his Sweet Chipotle took third and his signature Frog Sauce took first place in the same category. Not only that, but Frog Sauce scored high enough to beat out the winners of the other categories, officially making it the Best Sauce on the Planet. The sauce is about 60 percent white distilled vinegar and “has a unique flavor, some Worcestershire sauce. There’s no high-fructose corn syrup, just plain white sugar and lots of black pepper,” he says. “It has a black-pepper spiciness that’s bold up front, but doesn’t burn your taste buds and overwhelm the flavor of the barbecue.” If you’re wondering about the name, Ryan’s first recipe was for a rub, and one evening, while drinking with friends, they decided to make the logo for his new brand a tree frog because, well, when you apply a rub to meat, you “rub-it, rub-it.” The logo stuck, and when Ryan introduced his first sauce, it was named Frog Sauce.
And why are all three of Ryan’s sauces vinegar-based? Because “all of the sauces on the standard grocery shelf are tomato-based,” he says. “I wanted to create something different, something you can’t buy at the store. Using a vinegar-based sauce provides that zing on your taste buds that makes you say, 'Wow!'”
Asked what impact his success has had, Ryan, a seasoned competitive barbecuer who also has developed a line of rubs, laughs. “More and more people are using my stuff and competing with it and winning against me in barbecue competitions,” he says. “People try to hide it from me at their table, and I just smile and let them know it’s OK. People are winning with my sauce!”
Rob’s Smokin’ Rub, robssmokinrub.com