Barbecue Sauce

[chasea]

I've been in New York City for 3 1/2 years. What do you yankees not get? WHY ALL THE SUGAR?

You can get better bbq sauce with your 10-piece McNuggets.

It's a dayum shame.

[soupless]

It all tastes like ketchup and brown sugar to me.

[Brandon White]

A BBQ place opened up here recently .. I think they claim Tennessee BBQ and their sauce is more vinegary. Its really good.

It's called Bad Bobs.

[WadePatton]

As i made my first ever batch of ketchup from the remnants of a ripe tomato pickling batch, bbq sauce was _on my mind_.

I'm of the tomato-based camp. I make a vinegar slaw (for fish/bbq especially), don't need a watery-vinegary sauce with a vinegar slaw atwo.

All these years i've used the sauces of others, sometimes modified. Here's an exercise: go to grocery and pick up a bottle of bbq sauce, look at ingredients, find HFC, put sauce back down. repeat until you find one made with sugar or molasses and then consider it. That's how i found the only two i will eat or serve straight out of the bottle. from memphis is "Sticky Fingers" and i forgot the other one, and my keyboard is out so this typing on the laptop sucks and i am gone...

OH and a local large chain of bbq stands does the vinegar/black pepper sauce and it's okay sometimes, but i'd never serve it alone. Another one-man shop (best wings on planet) makes perfect sauce. Red sauce that compliments and his xtra-hot will warm you all over. but of course, i have to make mine own.

internet is worthless all recipes for bbq sauce call for katsup!

and really fresh, just pulled bbq SHOULD be enjoyed w/o any additional sauce-if any at all...for the first few servings anyway.

[Nierman]

Lots of good sauces to choose from here in KC, but KC Masterpiece(o'shit) is one of my least favorites. Too sweet as chase mentions.

Had some Carolina style mustard-based bbq once on some kielbasa. All those spices played very nice together as you would expect. Gonna have to find me some more of that for those occasions. Red meat gets the red sauces for me, though. Like beer, I hope I never find the perfect one because it's the pursuit that makes me happiest.

Food is so @#$^ing good.

[protege55]

For those keeping track at home, there are a number of "Carolina" style sauces - Mustard comes more routinely from S. Carolina, while in N. Carolina there is Eastern NC (Vinegar/Pepper) and then Lexington Style (a hybrid of Eastern and some tomato)...all are perfect on anything. The best, however, is when any/all of it is poured on top of pork shoulder pulled or chopped (here we call that barbeque) on a bun with some slaw...

As a former midwestener, however, I will attest that I do love KC-style cue - LCs, Bryants - you show me some burnt ends, and I'm a happy man.

Tough to buy good sauce, though. None are all things to all people...but 'cue in NYC? Isn't Fatty Cue in Brooklyn?

[maunahaole]

A diminutive fellow in a barn in Pennsylvania makes a fine carolina BBQ sauce as a side project to his coffee roasting and bike building pursuits. I know this because he gave me the recipe and I made it myself. The only caveat is that you need to ignore the smells of the cooking process and focus on the finished product.

A good way to cheat and make a bottled BBQ sauce tolerable is to dice up and add in some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Find them in a little can in the Mexican food section, pretty sure that they are Embasa brand. Heat and smoke. very concentrated and potent.

[Ben]

Basic sauce primer from one of the best magazines out there:
http://gardenandgun.com/article/barbecue-sauces

The same issue had a list of the best BBQ sandwiches in America that could serve as a 'cue lover's bucket list.

Living in East Tennessee, I've been lucky enough to try about all of it through the years (including Alabama-style white sauce, which is weird but good). I love 'em all.

If anyone's interested in a recipe for Tennessee-style red, I believe I have the best there is, and might share if provoked. It requires about a dozen ingredients (some of which I'd never heard of before making it), takes a couple hours to make, and your nose will sting most of that time due to evaporating vinegar, but it's as good as it gets, IMO. I didn't make it up, by the way -- it came from an older woman who swore it's the recipe used at one of the nation's true barbecue landmarks, Ridgewood Barbecue in Bluff City, Tennessee.

Chase, I'm curious about what's your favorite Memphis joint. I like dry ribs, if that makes any difference in your rec.

[maunahaole]

Wade might make you post that recipe. I'd like to give it a try.

Personally, I have had good luck with my own adaptation of the CIA guava bbq recipe. I used chinese hot mustard powder and added pulp from my yard grown guavas. It is really watery, so you absolutely need to use it on something that takes repeated bastings, but has a nice balance of sweet and hot.

[WadePatton]

thanks in advance ben for sharing the recipe to which you refer. that's what this place is aboot--sharing and learning, not staring and drooling---well, there'll be some of that too.

and thanks for the link. oh wow that was short and simple...but more than i had to hang my hat on. light tomato/pepper is my current fave. going to make some yellow. no interest in mayo. there's only one shop serving vinegar/pepper here (whitt's) and i don't care for it. i could probably make some that i like, but don't see the point in fighting it.

hate that the tomato crop is over for lack of rain, but will make some if i can get enough fresh 'maters.

and now that i recall-whitt's vinegar/pepper is way too heavy on black pepper and not red. i have in my hand a better vin/pep from alabama "Bishop's 3n1 Stuff" from Cherokee, Alabama.

[Ben]

Copied directly from the stone tablet on which it was given to me:

32 oz. ketchup
4 T. and 4 t. Worcestershire sauce (yes, I know that's 5T, 1t. Like I said, just copying.)
1/3 bottle Texas Pete
4 t. mustard
4 T. and 4 t. white vinegar
5 T. oil
1/2 T. onion salt
1/2 T. garlic salt
1/2 T. Accent
4 T. molasses
4 t. Kitchen Bouquet
1/2 t. pepper
1/2 t. salt
6 T. and 2 t. sugar

Mix and simmer one hour.

[Chance Legstrong]

Lots of good sauces to choose from here in KC, but KC Masterpiece(o'shit) is one of my least favorites. Too sweet as chase mentions.
.

Agree! please do not, not, not judge KC bbq by KC (can't even say the name)

[Too Tall]

This thread will be huge.

[prcrstn8]

We Yankees make the best bagels on the planet. Condiments can be mail-ordered from anywhere.

[chasea]

We Yankees make the best bagels on the planet. Condiments can be mail-ordered from anywhere.

And the best bagels are mailed to me in NYC from my relatives in Detroit.

[Ben]

We Yankees make the best bagels on the planet. Condiments can be mail-ordered from anywhere.

Bagels : Barbecue :: Kathy Bates : Minka Kelly.

[prcrstn8]

And the best bagels are mailed to me in NYC from my relatives in Detroit.

Sacrilege.

[WadePatton]

SAUCE!!!

yo

and i'll re-direct by saying fresh bbq should not need _any_ sauce. sauce should only tried after one or two full servings of the _fresh_ bbq.

day-old bbq needs sauce. and a ton-zillion of what is sold was cooked yesterday. until you make your own it can be difficult to make the distinction.

[arcadian]

My wife is from Memphis and I have frequented many of the BBQ joints there. Most are average at best. I have a theory that they are victim of their own success. BBQ takes love and time, and the bigger the restaurant the more corners start getting cut. One that stands out is Ma Payne’s. Terrific sandwich.

I haven't seen BBQ nachos in Memphis, maybe I wasn't looking for them.

Vinegar makes the best sandwich in my mind, but I grew up on it. My wife and her family are converted as well.

Dry makes the best ribs.

Really good homemade BBQ is tough to beat. It usually kills anything the restaurants put out.

[Chance Legstrong]

SAUCE!!!

yo

and i'll re-direct by saying fresh bbq should not need _any_ sauce. sauce should only tried after one or two full servings of the _fresh_ bbq.

day-old bbq needs sauce. and a ton-zillion of what is sold was cooked yesterday. until you make your own it can be difficult to make the distinction.

why talk sauce if you can't talk about what it goes on?
i agree though, that the sauce should be a side car not the driver