My first encounter with a generic barbeque sauce ended with me wondering why anyone would add sweetness to meat. Slowly barbeque sauce was familiar flavor but it never grew enough on me to buy it off-the-shelf. A few months ago, a friend of mine was constantly professing his love for anything with the barbeque sauce. After listening to him, I decided to give a fight chance to a barbeque sauce. I decided to buy one generic barbeque sauce and ended up buying three more within a short period of a month.
Barbeque sauces varies according personal preference, manufactures formulation or regional nuances. However, typically barbecue sauces consist of three of the following base ingredients, in the order of the most commonly used to more exotic ones.
- Tomato is most common base for barbecue sauce and lends its unique flavor and sweetness to barbeque sauces.
- Vinegar results in sour and thin barbeque sauce usually contained red pepper flakes or black pepper powder.
- Mustard based barbeque sauces have obviously spicy mustard taste and thick in consistency. Mustard sauce is usually paired with pork barbeques.
Barbeque sauce is defined by your interpretation of harmonious balance between its four types of flavors; sweet, savory, sour, and heat/spicy. Here are some of the ingredients that can provide unique barbeque flavors.
- Sweetness; sugar, brown sugar, molasses, fruit syrup, honey, soda (some people do add Coke or Pepsi)
- Sourness; vinegar, lime, lemon
- Savory; tomatoes, herbs, worcestershire sauce, beef or chicken stock, soy sauce, bourbon, cloves
- Heat/Spicy; black pepper, mustard, chipotle, chili powder, cayenne pepper, horseradish, jalapeño, habanero, serrano, paprika
Barbeque sauces displayed on a aisle in a store
This diversity in barbeque sauce has resulted in each region of the United States developing their own regional favorites. Here are some of them listed alphabetically;
- Alabama barbeque sauce is mayonnaise-based “white sauce”.
- East Carolina barbeque sauce is vinegar based sauce spiced with ground black pepper and hot chili pepper flakes.
- Hawaiian barbeque sauce is sweet soy sauce based with fruit juice (typically pineapple) spiced with ginger. It may also have other sweet ingredients such as honey and molasses.
- Kansas City barbeque sauce is thick tomato-based sauce with molasses and vinegar.
- South Carolina barbeque sauce is typically yellow barbecue sauces made primarily from yellow mustard, vinegar, sugar and spices.
- Tennessee barbecue sauce usually has equal portion of tomatoes and vinegar, and often worcestershire sauce.
- Texas barbecue sauces are either thick tomato-based or thin peppery sauce with influence of Tex-Mex seasonings.
You probably have access to hundreds of barbeque sauces to choose from in your local stores. There are thousands of good barbeque sauce recipes. Hence, I am not going to give any recipes here. My suggestion is google your favorite type of barbeque sauce and gets idea of recipe by looking at few. Alternatively, you can always buy a standard barbeque sauce and change its flavor to suit your palette by adding one (or more) of the following;
- Bourbon
- Brown sugar
- Chipotle chili or any dried chilies
- Cinnamon
- Cumin or curry powder
- Ginger
- Garlic
- Honey
- Ketchup
- Lime or lemon juice and/or zest
- Mayonnaise
- Maple syrup
- Mustard
- Mint chopped (or any other aromatic herbs)
- Orange juice and/or zest (or other fruit juice)
- Pineapple or mango puree (or other fruit puree)
- Soya sauce
- Sriracha sauce
- Vinegar
- Wine
