Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Carolina sauce

I'd appreciate your views and suggested recipes. East, west, or south as they all sound good to me.

Carolina vinegar sauce? I believe there's a rift between the Massengill and Summer's Eve factions.

I love a mustard and vinegar sauce. Simple as can be and easy to make as sweet or sharp as you like.

Straight ACV with a bit of sugar and various peppers is always good as well. Will put just a bit of ground fennel in it as well .

For a mustard sauce, just mix yellow mustard, brown sugar, and apple cider vinegar. Easy to add a bit of either to get it where you like it. Add black pepper, salt, garlic powder, and cayenne to your taste.

Quite a few variations of Carolina Bbq sauce. Some with just vinegar ,salt , pepper , sugar and crushed red pepper to some with all the above with a bit of ketchup or mustard. Its about like chili or Stew Everyone has their own version of what is authentic or has the right ingredients even in the Carolinas.

Interesting that there's distinct variations in one state. Ketchup, no ketchup, mustard, no mustard. All sounds good on pork. I like salt and pepper on smoked beef, and no sauce of any type, but adding some twang to pork seems to work well.

This include the Alabama white ?

Damn!

Heard of it, but never tried it.

All variations sound very German. Horseradish. Mustard. Vinegar.

I like an Alabama white sauce on chicken and turkey, not so much on pork or beef

It is a fact that the "best" BBQ is the one you grew up with. Texas style, Memphis style, St Louis Style, Kansas City style, Alabama style, or any of the several Carolina styles. But I'll let you in on a massive secret: they're all delicious.

I grew up on St Louis style with grey-haired Black men running pits at every intersection, featuring the beef and pork parts that the stockyards threw away - mostly ribs. (Yes, ribs were "trim" back then!) The method cooked them low and slow over hickory coals, bathed in a sweet tomato-based sauce the whole cooking time. The meat came out deep red, sticky sweet, with black crusty edges - and was sublime.

Enter adulthood and a year in deepest Texas, where it was beef brisket over mesquite, no sauce at all, and -- surprise -- it was sublime.

Trips to the Carolinas revealed whole hog BBQ with mustard-based and vinegar-based sauces. Both, no...ALL...sublime.

Five years in the sho-nuff Souf meant dry rubs and pork ribs, and pulled pork with coleslaw. Yeah, you guessed it: sublime.

It's all BBQ, it's all wonderful, and I cannot get enough of it.

I have to agree Rocky. The same can be said for Mexican food for me.

Oh, yeah. Same theme there: what we mostly know as "Mexican food" is actually Tex-Mex. Strictly a border-born style. What they actually eat in Mexico is FAR more diverse, more regional, and comprised of things we've never heard of unless we've been there.

Ditto what we know as "Chinese food." You ask a Mexican or Chinese chef about what they serve us, and they just shake their heads. It's all what we Americans imagine is Chinese or Mexican. It hardly resembles the real thing - in all its many varieties.

Apology to the OP. I am not a chef, not even a cook. I just eat. So no recipes from me. Wish I could, but...

Have preferences, but like Rocky, good food is good.


Gotta disagree a little on Tex-.Mex.
People say that phrase like they stepped in crap. Like it's equivalent to
American Chineese.

Mexico is a big dam country.
The area of the US that borders Mexico used to be...Mexico.
That food IS authentic. To that part of the world, including northern Mexico.

Looking down on Tex-Mex is equivalent to a Vermonter that vista Texas and then decides any other bar-b-que is fake.

I share your opinion. Pretty much enjoyed all the BBQ I ever ate from Texas to the Carolinas.

I didn't mean to sound like I'm against Tex-Mex. Your observations about it being regionally authentic are correct. That's actually the point I was trying to make - that there are distinct regional styles to ALL kinds of cuisine. The mistake often made is to place one regional style over all other others - like thinking that Cantonese is the only Chinese.

And (back to the OP) that goes for BBQ, too.

Carolina BBQ is the best.. their red slaw is the worst! I'm originally from SC but have lived in N C for 40 yrs. Good ole fashion mayonnaise slaw will always be the best...red slaw is nasty !

Never had red slaw before.

Are you a fan of Duke's for your slaw?

this is what i do for NC style pork sauce. not sure if its east, west, north or south but seems pretty close to the stuff i had in NC. works good for a finish sauce as well.

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup apple juice
4 TB brown sugar
1 TB franks hot sauce
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

bring to a boil and then let cool. this really improves with age. i make it and put it in the fridge.

And Italian.

If you want easy just take half or 3/4 a bottle of your favorite store bought and fill the rest with cider vinegar.

It covers a lot of bases.