Simple Chicken Soup Recipe

Commercial barbecue sauces Sometimes it seems as if every rib joint in the country is bottling its sauce and selling it on the internet. My tongue has been marinating in them for years and, since you asked, I'd be glad to recommend a few. Click here to see which sauces I like best and how to get them.

About sauce ingredients Just like barbecue sauce, the ingredients used in making barbecue sauces have many permutations. There are hundreds of mustards, for instance, and they can really taste different, even to the uneducated palate. Did you know that many barbecue sauces contain Worcestershire sauce which contains anchovies? For more about how mustard, ketchup, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and other common sauce ingredients are made, check out the article on my favorite ingredients.

About liquid smoke Many commercial sauces contain liquid smoke, which is smoke from burning hardwood that has been captured and dissolved in alcohol. When added to sauces it contributes another layer of flavor, simulating, but not duplicating, the flavor of hardwood smoke from the cooker. Purists hate it, but if you have no way to cook outdoors, it can really help.

The old saw is that the secret to great barbecue is the sauce. Not so.

The sauce is just part of the picture. But there's no doubt that a good sauce can really make the meat taste better. And it can cover up your mistakes.

Below are the 12 classic American barbecue sauces (if we stretch the definition of "sauce" to include Memphis dry rubs). Click the links in red for my recipes if you want to make your own. All barbecue cooks should have their own signature sauce!

1) Kansas City. By far the most popular style, this is the classic rich, sweet-tart, tomato ketchup-based sauce often sweetened with molasses or brown sugar and balanced with vinegar. Many have liquid smoke to help get that outdoor flavor for folks who cannot cook outdoors. But beware: Most commercial sauces labeled Kansas City sauce are waaaaaay too sweet. If you pick up a bottle in the grocery labeled Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce", and sugar or high fructose syrup are the first ingredients on the label, put it down. KC sauces don't penetrate the meat well, and sit on top like frosting. They caramelize beautifully over a hot fire.

2) South Carolina Mustard Sauce. Nowhere are there more regional sauces than South Carolina. In the eastern part of the state, on the North Carolina border, there is a vinegar and pepper sauce that is similar to the East Carolina mop-sauce. There is a tomato laced vinegar sauce from the northern hill country similar to the Lexington and Hill Country sauce from North Carolina. And there is a ketchup based sauce similar to Kansas City sauce. But the most distinctive, and by far my fave, is the mustard based sauce. Mustard and pork go together like peanut butter and jelly. Early German immigrants in South Carolina knew this. The classic SC mustard sauces found in barbecue joints from Columbia to Charleston are mostly runny yellow mustard, vinegar, sugar, and spices. Simple but very effective. The names of many of the best barbecue joints that serve mustard sauce have German names: Shealy, Sweatman, Meyer, and Zeigler. They are especially good on pulled pork. I offer two versions, the one linked to the top of this paragraph is the classic while my Grown-up Mustard Sauce is a more complex, herbal variation on the theme. Around the rest of the state it is common to find sauces similar to North Carolina.

3) East Carolina Vinegar Mop-Sauce. On the coast of North and South Carolina, a.k.a. the "East Carolina" or the "Low Country", the philosophy is: "Keep the mustard for your hot dogs and the ketchup for your fries." The African slaves of the Scottish settlers in the region pioneered American barbecue and their simple sauces were plain a kiss of hot pepper flakes and ground black pepper in vinegar. And so they remain today where the sauce is used both as a mop, or baste, on the meat while it is cooking, and then as a finishing sauce at tableside. Thin and piquant, they are designed to penetrate the meat, not just sit on top as thicker ketchup and mustard sauces often do. They do a great job of cutting the fat in lipid-laced pork, important in a state where barbecue means chopped pork, not ribs. There is little or no sugar in the mix, so your kids will hate it. Taste it on just a bit of your chopped pork before your pour it over the whole sandwich, and if don't like it, send the leftovers to me. My Kiss & Vinegar East Carolina Mop-Sauce is simple and classic.

4) Lexington Dip (aka Western Carolina or Piedmont Dip). In Lexington and in the "Piedmont" hilly areas of western North Carolina they often call their mop-sauce "dip". It is vinegar and pepper based, a lot like the East Carolina mop-Sauce, but laced with a hint of tomato sauce or ketchup. The hill country of South Carolina serves similar sauces. The red stuff helps tame the fierceness of the vinegar a bit, and the hint of sweetness conterbalances the acidity. I prefer it slightly to the East Carolina style.

5) Texas Sauce. There are three important culinary influences on Texas barbecue: (1) European immigrants who brought expertise in smoking meats, especially Germans, Czechs, and Hungarians (2) freed slaves from the Southeast, and (3) Mexicans (Texas was, after all, a part of Mexico, and its cuisine leans heavily on Spanish, Mayan, and Aztec cultures). Most Texas sauces are fashioned to complement beef brisket first and they are not very sweet. Some traditional Texas pitmasters use their sauce as both a mop to cool and moisten the meat during direct cooking, and as an optional finishing sauce for everything, including sausage, mutton, pork ribs, and chicken. Most common are thin, tart mops that are flavored with vinegar, chili powder or ancho powder, lots of black pepper, cumin, hot sauce, fresh onion, and only a touch of ketchup. They are rarely as thick and sweet as Kansas City sauces and often resemble a thin tomato soup. They penetrate the meat easily rather than sit on top. I prefer them on brisket, not pork. Some of the best sauces have beef drippings, and therefore cannot be bottled. In this picture, the bottled sauce sold at one of the best joints in Texas, Cooper's in Llano, is poured into a large pot and is kept warm on the holding pit. Trimmings are tossed in the pot, and when you order, if you ask for sauce, the meat is dipped in the pot. It tastes a LOT different than the bottled sauce served on the tables. Texas rubs are formulated for brisket so they have little or no sugar, lots of black pepper, and so they are very different from Memphis and most other rubs.

6) Tennessee Whiskey Sauce. The Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue is considered by many to be the most prestigious competition in the world. As do many competitions, they have a sauce category, but theirs has a twist: Jack Daniels must be in the blend. Well, just as they planned it, whiskey-laced sauces have spread across the nation. There are so many that I consider it to be a legitimate category of barbecue sauce. My recipe for Tennessee Hollerin' Whiskey Sauce is named after the hollow, a lowland by the creek in which it was invented, this rich sauce has a kick, and when you taste it you'll bend over and holler "Kick me!" The secret: Whiskey concentrate.

7) Louisiana Hot Dippin Sauce. Fiery foods are, forgive me, are hot right now. A few years ago nobody north of Texas had heard of chipotle. Now it's on everyone's spice rack and there's even a restaurant chain named after the smoked jalapeno. The first bottled hot sauces came out of Louisiana, home of Tabasco Sauce. Not surprisingly, there are lots of great hot and spicy barbecue sauces on the market. Some just burn from capsaicin (the active ingredient in chili peppers), but the best are blends of several different kinds of heat, among them: Black pepper, white pepper, mustard, wasabi, several different kinds of chilis, plus an underlying flavor of the meat of the chili pepper. The heat is then usually tempered with tomato sauce, and often countered with sweetness. Bayou Bite, my version of a Louisiana barbecue sauce is a wonderful blend of sweet and hot peppers used as a finishing sauce, after the meat is cooked, or as a dippin sauce served with the meat. Even if you don't like hot stuff, you really should try this one.

8) Alabama White Sauce. Developed for chicken by Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama, this mayonnaise and vinegar sauce has become so well known among barbecue fans that it has generated many admirers and a handful of imitators. I don't recommend it for ribs, and not everyone likes it on chicken, but it is so popular in Alabama it must be consider a regional classic.

9) Memphis Dry Rub. Memphis is second only to Kansas City in barbecue renown, but alas, there is no distinctive indigineous Memphis sauce style. That's because many purists prefer their ribs "dry" with only a spice rub. A restaurant's gotta have confidence in its meat to serve it with spices only and no sauce. Many Memphis restaurants have bowed to public demand and now offer a choice: Dry or wet, with wet usually meaning a Kansas City-style tomato-based sauce perhaps a bit thinner, more vinegary. Memphis dry rubs are usually paprika based, and typical ingredients are salt, garlic, onion, black pepper, chili powder, and oregano. Perhaps the most revered dry ribs are served at Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous (called "The Vous" by the locals). There are a lot of recipes on the internet that the owners have palmed off on gullible media. They aren't close. I've reversed engineered Rendezvous-style Memphis Dry Ribs, and my recipe is a LOT closer to the real deal. Follow the link and I'll also tell you how to cook ribs like The Vous. And it's not low and slow!

10) Fruit sauce. There are a number of wonderful sauces made with fruits, jams, and jellies as sweeteners. They often are your basic tomato based barbecue sauce with jams as sweeteners. Raspberry, cherry, and apple are common. The best work great with ribs. Eve's KC Pig Paint is a rich, sweet, Kansas City-style tomato-based sauce, with a secret ingredient from the Garden of Eden.

11) Sweet Glaze. A lot of great sauces are mostly sweetener, vinegar, and spices. The sweetener is usually brown sugar and/or molasses, and occasionally maple syrup, which, although wonderful, is too expensive for most commercial sauces. They tend to penetrate well, they are shiny so they make the meat glisten, and they are sweet/sour so they complement the pork and cut the fat.

12) Novelty sauces. Modern chefs are nothing if not creative, and just about anything you can imagine is used to make barbecue sauces. These sauces rarely have regional logic, and no matter how good, I can only clasify them as novelties. Old timers in Charleston, SC, in the heart of great mustard sauce country, clutch their hearts when it is mentioned, but Tristan restaurant's Chocolate based barbecue sauces are a good example. Believe it or not, it's darn tasty.

Saucing strategies

Apply the sauce after the meat is ready. Sauces, especially sweeties, will burn if you add them too early in the process and they can prevent the smoke from penetrating the meat. Penetration is good. Sauces will also generate steam when they heat up and steam can make your meat mushy. So apply the sauce at the end of the cook, just long enough to heat it and cook it without burning it. Some sauces are great right from the bottle, but most sauces benefit from baking on the meat. If you are cooking over indirect heat, low and slow at about 225F, you can add the sauce about 30 minutes before removing it.

Play it safe. Remember, all uncooked meat contains microbes and spores and is therefore poisonous. Pour the sauce you need into a cup or bowl and dip your brush or spoon into the cup or bowl. When you are done, throw it out. Never put it back in the fridge. Even if the meat appears to be cooked, uncooked meat juices get on the brush and then get into the sauce. If you have a bit of sauce left in the cup when you are done painting the meat, do not serve it as a dipping sauce. It is contaminated. Even if you boil it or microwave it, and you have killed the microbes, spores are not all killed by heat. Use fresh uncontaminated sauce for serving at the table. Your motto is: When in doubt, throw it out.

Don't over do it. Most barbecue sauces are sweet. But some are sweeter than others. Go easy on the sauce. One coat is usually enough. Especially if it is very sweet. You can always add more at tableside. You will need 1/3-1/2 cup of sauce per slab of ribs. If you are serving cut ribs, sauce them first. Don't sauce the cut sides and cover the meat.

Warm the sauce. If you can, warm the sauce on a sideburner or in a microwave to take the chill off. No sense on putting 40F sauce on 180F ribs. It will also make the sauce less thick and it will penetrate the meat better.

Sizzle and crisp the sauce over direct heat. If you like your sauce caramelized and crispy, perhaps even a littleburnt, you can paint on the sauce and place the slab over hot direct heat for ten minutes or so per side, watching carefully so it doen't burn. Sauce can go from red to black faster than a clean hog can get sloppy. But if you like it a little charred, go for it! Burning is not the only hazard with this method. If you have perfectly cooked ribs coming off a smoker, sizzling the sauce is a great opportunity to overcook the meat. If you use this method, shorten the cooking time by about 30 minutes. The high heat will overcook the meat if you don't. Here's some techniques for sizzling the sauce depending on the cooker you are using:

If you're cooking on a charcoal grill. I cook with the method described in Best Setup For A Charcoal Grill. When they are ready, I remove the top water pan and put the slabs right over the coals and heat for about ten minutes on each side until the sauce bubbles. Again, stand there and watch the slabs so the sauce bubbles but does not burn!

If you're cooking on a gas grill. I cook with the method described in Best Setup For A Gas Grill. When they are ready, I crank up the heat to high and slather on the sauce for about 5-10 minutes on each side or until it bubbles.

If you're cooking on a smoker. If there is an offset firebox, perhaps you can sizzle the sauce over the flame on a grate in the firebox, but there's a lotta heat in there. I recommend using a gas grill for sizzling if you have one. If you have a gas grill in addition to your smoker, fire it up to medium or high about 30 minutes before the time to serve the meat, transfer the slabs to the gas grill, paint on the sauce, and stand there and watch them so the sauce bubbles but does not burn! If you don't have a gas grill, just place the saucy slabs about three inches under the kitchen broiler, back side first, for about ten minutes per side. Again, keep an eye on it.

Torch it! Another good way to crisp the sauce is to whip out your propane soldering torch or invest about $30 in an amazingly hot butane culinary torch (above) and scorch the sauce enough to caramelize the sugars. Do this at tableside to dazzle your guests (or send them running for the exits). Hooo-ah!

Apply the sauce at the table. Another good strategy is to serve the meat without sauce and allow your guests to apply it at the table as a finishing sauce in whatever quantity they like.

Skip the sauce. If the meat tastes good, sauces will just mask it's natural flavors. If you have a good dry rub, proper smoke penetration, and it is not overcooked, go nekked.

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