Chef’s Special of the Day - Barbeque Sauce Lesson
A Taxonomy Of American Barbecue Sauces
The regional American barbecue sauces
American barbecue sauces owe their differences to their colonial histories and can be divided in three basic categories, vinegar based, tomato based, and mustard based. Then there are at least 15 distinct classic American regional barbecue sauce styles and infinite variations.
1) Kansas City Sweet Sauce
Kansas City barbecue sauce is the iconic classic rich red, tomato-based, sweet-tart sauce with molasses or brown sugar and balanced with the tartness of vinegar. Many have liquid smoke added to help create that outdoor flavor for folks who cannot cook outdoors. They are by far the most popular in the nation and imitated around the country.
2) South Carolina Mustard Sauce
3) East Carolina Mop-Sauce – Vinegar and Pepper
4) West Carolina – Tomato Sauce Added
5) Western South Carolina – Ketchup Based
6) Texas Mop-Sauce - Most common are thin, tart mops that are flavored with vinegar, American chili powder or ancho powder, lots of black pepper, cumin, hot sauce, fresh onion, and only a touch of ketchup. Some of the best sauces have beef drippings
7) Alabama White Sauce - Mayonnaise and vinegar sauce
8) Kentucky Black Barbecue Sauce and Dip - The most obscure of the regional sauces because it can be found in only a small area of Western Kentucky, this fascinating blend is mostly distilled white vinegar and Worcestershire sauce.
9) Tennessee Whiskey Sauce - The Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational
10) New Orleans Barbecue Sauce - a buttery hot sauce
11) Memphis Dry Rub
Memphis is second only to Kansas City as a town of barbecue renown. Alas, there is no distinctive indigenous Memphis sauce style they use a dry rub that is paprika based, and typical ingredients are salt, garlic, onion, black pepper, American chili powder, and oregano.
12) Tartar Sauce For Florida Smoked Mullet And Grilled Fish
13) Sweet Glazes
A lot of great sauces are just a mix of sweetener, vinegar, and spices. The sweetener is usually brown sugar and/or molasses, and occasionally maple syrup.
14) Hawaiian Huli-Huli Teriyaki Sauce
Huli-Huli Sauce was originally a teriyaki sauce, which, in Japan, is a simple blend of soy sauce, mirin (a sweet rice wine), and a little sugar reduced to a glaze. It was always popular with Hawaiians, and then in the 1950s a grillmaster with a head for marketing renamed it Huli-Huli Sauce, and everyone stole his name.
15) Flavored Sauces – Anything goes!