Barbecue Sauces

Kentucky BourbonQ® Brand

White barbecue sauce was born in Alabama, and Red's White Sauce is the real deal. Created by an Alabama native now living in North Carolina, Red's White Sauce is a scrumptiously creamy, spicy mayonnaise-based sauce that is great for grilling, baking, broiling or smoking. Simply marinate your favorite meat overnight, and then cook your favorite way while basting with a little extra sauce. Red's White Sauce is tasty on pork, beef, venison and poultry, and is also the perfect complement for fish and seafood. We've fallen in love with Red's White Sauce here at SouthernThings, and we use it as a salad dressing and dipping sauce, on baked potatoes and chicken wings, as a sandwich spread and condiment, mixed into tuna salad and potato salad, and even as a topping for crab cakes.

Gluten-free, zero trans fat. A Goodness Grows in NC product.

A History of North Carolina Barbecue

North Carolina’s contributions to the history of modern civilization encompass many aspects of culture, politics and cuisine. From the Wright Brothers to world renowned Colleges, Universities and research centers to ACC basketball, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife; NC has given its best; but to this day, the institution known as North Carolina Barbeque remains the most misunderstood and hotly debated. NC Barbecue enjoys a long and distinguished history in North Carolina, and has come to be synonymous with political campaigns, fund raising and any celebration of merit that warrants its inclusion. It is the stuff that has inspired songs, stories and volumes of essays and literature. Barbeque is to North Carolina what crabs are to Maryland and lobsters to Maine. North Carolina Barbecue with its evolution and contributions from many cultures has cut across the lines of race, class and generational change. To understand NC Barbecue’s prominence it is necessary to draw a distinctive line between roasted meats served in North Carolina and that of the rest of the nation. 

It's the sauce...

They are two different animals and despite the use of the term 'barbecue' in other parts of the country, in North Carolina the word means roast pork, often the entire pig. While in the mid-west, south west and Deep South the emphasis is usually on the sauce, but in the Tar Heel state the phenomena of barbecue revolves as much around the process of cooking the meat as it does the ingredients of the sauce – although considerable discourse has been rendered as we shall see, about just what constitutes authentic North Carolina barbecue sauce. It is impossible to know just how far back the barbecue tradition goes – whether it can be traced to the feasts of African slaves, the traditional Scottish/Irish Boar Roast, Native American cooking techniques passed along to the first settlers (The earliest colonists in Jamestown and Tidewater Virginia, similar in geography and culture to Northeastern North Carolina, certainly used the technique, and Jamaican natives were observed using a similar technique as far back as 1661) , or to the pirates and sailors who frequented our shores. Interestingly enough, the term buccaneer, a 17th century adventurer or sea privateer, comes from the technique, called "boucan" or the process of curing meat by smoking it slowly over a fire. Its French practitioners hence were called "boucaniers." It is not unlikely that the technique combined with Bahamian and Jamaican variances was transferred from the Caribbean to eastern North Carolina. It is perhaps a combination of all of them, or a naturally occurring phenomenon, in consideration of the ease with which hogs have been raised in this state. 

NC Pig Pickin'

Today North Carolina produces the second highest number of hogs in the country, providing a wide selection of roasting carcasses. What is certain is that the practice has almost always included a slow-roasting process, over a low fire of oak or hickory, which lasts most of the day. The hog roast, or "pig pickin'", is perhaps the heart of North Carolina culinary culture. The process begins in the wee hours of the morning, when one or two stalwart souls (usually men – for no particularly good reason pig roasting is an art dominated by men) dress the hog carcass and light the fires. (This method also includes the use of alcoholic beverages and the telling of stories which seem to get more outlandish as the consumption of alcohol increases.) For the last hundred years pigs have been roasted over wood and charcoal fires, but for the last two decades more and more barbecuers have switched to cleaner burning propane flames, which some argue deprive the pork of its traditional smoky flavor. For either method the roasting is almost always done in a "pig cooker", a fuel oil drum which has been sawed in half, welded to an axel and a trailer hitch, and otherwise altered for the purpose. These cookers can get quite elaborate, and almost as much breath is wasted on the merits of particular designs as on the proper way to roast and season the hog. The hog is laid upon the grill over the flame, doused with sauce, the lid is closed, and at that point invariably someone breaks out some liquid refreshment and for the remainder of the day the roasting team stands around the big black steel tank and "watches the pig" – though little actual watching goes on. Every hour on the hour the lid is raised and the carcass is again liberally doused with sauce, inspected for progress, and then closed up again. The men spend the time between inspections chatting about the news of the day, the weather, sports, politics, and all other subjects that arise from the confluence of roast pork and beverages on the strong side of lemonade. In a traditional pig pickin' the woman are far from idle while the men accomplish the arduous chore of watching the pig and drinking. The side dishes at a pig pickin' are legendary. It is an opportunity for everyone to pull out old favorite recipes, some handed down from grandmothers on deathbeds, to delight the palate and impress friends and neighbors. Various salads, casseroles, pickles, preserves, and a whole host of desserts are prepared for the event. Some items are mandatory. Cole slaw, for instance, must be served, although the exact recipe varies from region to region and family to family. Boiled potatoes, with a cup full of barbecue sauce added to the water is also obligatory. Of course the bread accompaniment is the ubiquitous hushpuppy, the fried cornmeal staple of Southern life since Colonial times. And gallons and gallons of fresh brewed sweet iced tea, sometimes flavored with lemon, complement the usual selection of beverages. 

Two Sauces...

A word or two about the sauce: There are two different styles of Barbecue in North Carolina, Eastern and Western. In both cases the sauce is a vinegar-based concoction, heavily seasoned; the largest difference is that the Western or Lexington style of barbecue adds a small amount of tomato-base to the sauce, and also roasts pork shoulders in preference to the whole hog. That's it. That's the difference. Yet these tiny differences have caused near blood feuds between proponents of the two different styles. In both cases the vinegar base is augmented by a variety of secret herbs and spices – some favorites are salt, pepper, red pepper, cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic, nutmeg, molasses, whiskey, and brown sugar. The specific potion is often a closely held secret, or varies depending on the ingredients at hand, but the sauce is thin, unlike most commercial tomato-based barbecue sauces. No roaster in their right mind would put that sweet, ketchupy stuff on a perfectly good pig. The essence of the pig pickin' experience is the pure flavor of slow-roasted, well-seasoned pork. Often chopped by hand into a fine pulp and seasoned to taste with more sauce, the resulting product is the source of rapturous delight for thousands every day. The pig pickin' has been used by hundreds of churches as a fund-raising technique, and there was even a Barbecue Presbyterian Church in Harnett County, near Sanford, established in 1757. While the home-grown pig pickin' has persisted as a venerable institution in North Carolina, the commercial potential of barbecue has been fully realized. In small towns and big cities across the state there are hundreds of small barbecue establishments who serve either the chopped variety or "pulled" pork sandwiches – a technique by which the tender roasted pork is literally pulled off of the carcass. Barbecue has become a good-sized business in North Carolina, and many of these establishments augment over-the-counter sales with impressive catering operations. It has also become traditional for the barbecue catering industry get a huge financial boost every election year. No one knows whom the first politician was to provide barbecue for supporters at political rallies, but for scores of years now virtually no candidate for office has been able to get away with a successful election without cooking at least one pig for the constituency. The practice has become so prevalent that even politicians outside of the state will send to North Carolina for expert barbecuers to come and impress their own supporters with the perfectly roasted pink pork. There are certain towns in North Carolina who have developed a reputation for having the best barbecue restaurants and making up for a lack of other major attractions these establishments have become local tourist attractions, and those with the need for barbecue think nothing of driving an extra twenty-five miles out of their way to make a pilgrimage to them. Barbecue is one of the few subjects that have always cut through the usual racial lines North Carolina has been afflicted with. Even in the depths of the Jim Crow era and in the turbulent Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s barbecue joints was one of the few places where black and white patrons rubbed elbows on a regular basis. While black students staged sit-ins at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, a few miles away at one of the more famous shops in North Carolina, white folk and black folk sat at the same table, eating the same rich smoky pork sandwiches, with nary a fuss. Black families and white families have always vied on an equal footing for the bragging rights that come from recipes and roasting techniques. A roasted pig, it seems, is completely color-blind. In deference to health concerns and religious customs it is standard for a dozen or so chickens to be roasted with the pig. Sometimes a separate sauce is used, sometimes the same, but if you follow Mosaic Law or fear for your life you will almost always find a pile of succulent barbecued chicken available at either a pig pickin' or barbecue joint. 

Barbecue Shrooms...

Vegetarians still despair, though some of the more liberal-minded have tried using the same sauce that is used on pork on a large portabella mushroom. Needless to say, this scandalizes the barbecue traditionalist. While the tender fungus does nicely on the grill, it is not recommended that it be subjected to the same six-to-eight hour long roasting that a pig endures. Put the 'shrooms on the grill about fifteen minutes before serving. Barbecuing is so competitive in North Carolina that the state boasts no fewer than twenty five annual cook-offs. Most of these are in the Eastern part of the state, and therefore the whole hog/vinegar sauce method is emphasized, including the North Carolina Championship Pork Cook-Off, sponsored by the North Carolina Pork Producers Association, the Newport Pig Cookin' Contest; adherents to the Western style gather yearly at the Lexington Barbecue Festival to celebrate the pork shoulder/tomato sauce style in Lexington, North Carolina – a town that boasts twenty barbecue restaurants to service 17,000 people (only Lexington, Tennessee, with ten restaurants for 6,000 people has more barbecue restaurants per capita). The teams which compete at these events range from the weekend roaster to the stainless-steel equipped professional pig cooker. At stake are cash prizes and bragging rights, and the competition is fierce. Judges use a very wide variety of criteria to judge a pig, and ensure a lack of corruption by using blind taste tests in addition to on-site tasting inspections. 

A serious business...

Barbecue is serious business in North Carolina. Whether you are a passing traveler or a newcomer to the Tar Heel State a trip to a barbecue joint, restaurant or stand (or, better yet, a church or school pig pickin') is suggested in order to complete the North Carolina culinary experience. Advice on where to go is easy to come by – just ask any three strangers with North Carolina license plates, and you will have three suggestions – and more likely than not the place will be 'just down the road a 'piece'."