BBQ Sauce

[AlphaFrog]

I'm from IL...I've been taking the word of my 42 year old Charlotte-born co-worker and 60-something SC born boss... I'm pretty sure they knew their BBQs. It a pretty common converstation subject here at work.

[NutBrnHair]

My favorite BBQ place is Fresh Air BBQ, Jackson, GA

Here's part of an article from the Washington Post in 2004:

Fired Up Over a Tradition
Looking for Local Barbecue That Satisfies Savory Memories
Thursday, July 22, 2004


Barbecue is my ultimate comfort food.

It's the food I most associate with my parents, who seem to have had barbecue in their genes. Family reunions centered around barbecues: My mother's uncle hosted the annual Harper family gathering and led the crew that stayed up all night to cook a whole pig in a pit.

My father and his brother began frequenting Jackson, Ga.,'s Fresh Air Bar-B-Que not long after it opened in 1929. My uncle Cliff plotted his hunting and fishing trips around visits to Fresh Air, and in his later years a trip to Fresh Air was my ailing daddy's favorite outing. We children gathered there after his funeral.

When I was growing up, barbecue was the special treat on those rare occasions when our family of six didn't eat at home. Now I think it's in my genes.

And to me, real barbecue places should look like Fresh Air: a low-slung, unpainted wooden building, large stacks of wood outside, a sweet/acrid hickory aroma you can smell before you round the last curve, a parking lot that is as much sand as gravel, long communal tables with ladder-back chairs and those yellow-colored pest strips hanging from the ceiling. And, of course, a wooden screen door.

You don't go to Fresh Air for anything but barbecue, served either as a sandwich or a platter, with a paper cup of Brunswick stew and a paper cup of coleslaw, plus some slices of white bread. The pork is slow-cooked over hickory and oak, then pulled and chopped into small chunks that are anointed with a thin and spicy sauce prepared daily on an electric range that must be at least 30 years old.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

I'm from IL...I've been taking the word of my 42 year old Charlotte-born co-worker and 60-something SC born boss... I'm pretty sure they knew their BBQs. It a pretty common converstation subject here at work.

Of course, it's a pretty common conversation subject. You're in North Carolina.

I'll defer to a SC-born boss on SC barbecue, and maybe to a Charlotte-born co-worker on Charlotte barbecue, if there is such a thing (although Charlotteans are notorious for being clueless about the rest of North Carolina).

But I won't defer with regard to Eastern North Carolina barbecue, which I've been eating since I first got teeth -- no tomato sauce in the barbecue sauce.

This article is a pretty good description of NC barbecue, but Bob Garner's book is better.

[shinerbock]

Memphis>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NC

Get that weak-ass vinegar/mustard based garbage out of here.

[MysticCat]

Cretin.

I mean, I love Memphis barbecue.

Still . . . cretin.

[shinerbock]

Whatever, I'm just saying.

Just because a state says, "We're gonna proclaim ourselves the BBQ capital!" doesn't make it so.

Its like if GA suddenly started advertising that they were home of the world's best cajun food. The natural reaction is "what the hell are you talking about?"

Sorry to be so cruel, but NC'ers are absolutely obnoxious about this stuff. Especially considering most of them thought BBQ meant burgers and dogs 5 years ago when they were living in a mid-atlantic state.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by shinerbock

Especially considering most of them thought BBQ meant burgers and dogs 5 years ago when they were living in a mid-atlantic state.

Clueless you are about that. The only people who would say that are those who are, um, from away. (Seriously, in all my life I've never heard anyone born and raised in NC use barbecue as a verb or use it to refer to "grilling out.")

And yes, the obnoxiousness runs rampant when it comes to barbecue. I would never deny that -- I revel in it. It's part of the fun, kind of like rooting for a college sports team.

I love Memphis barbecue, I love Kansas City barbecue. I love just about anykind of barbecue. I tend to take the same view of barbecue that Duke Ellington had about music. There are only two kinds: good barbecue and the other kind. You find the good and the bad in all kinds of barbecue.

But for me, as much as I love it all, nothin' beats a good pig pickin'. I'm just saying.

And my initial point still stands -- it's just kind of odd for Sticky Fingers to call that thick, tomatoey stuff "Carolina" anything.

[shinerbock]

Sticky Fingers certainly isn't Carolina.

My point about grilling out is that there are so many yankees in NC now, and they're often just as obnoxious about BBQ.