subject: The Barbecue In Barbecue Sauce 3 [print this page] Most of the South and Southeastern US chops or slices their barbecue and applies good old fashioned barbecue sauce, but we discussed how farther toward the west the pork was "pulled", with the meat being hand-shredded after the same type of slow-cooking with sauce added afterward. This reaches its height with the style of cooking known as "Memphis Barbecue," which was also embraced alongside more traditional barbecue in Mississippi and Alabama.
The separate states really differentiated themselves primarily with the barbecue sauce recipes and the side dishes served with their barbecue. Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama favor the red tomato-based sauces, though Alabamans tend to prefer their sauce a little spicier. Northern Alabama also boasts a delicious white sauce composed of a vinegar-base with the addition of mayonnaise. The rubs which have become very popular recently were more common in western Tennessee and in Kentucky, where it wasn't unusual to serve the BBQ sauce on the side.
In the Carolinas you would likely have a serving of cole slaw and hush puppies along with your barbecue and barbecue sauce. If you take the mayonnaise out of the cole slaw and substitute vinegar, ketchup and black pepper you would be right at home in North Carolina with your "barbecue slaw." Sounds tasty, doesn't it? Other sides, varying by region and state, included the foods which we expect at today's barbecue picnic. You'd find not only slaws, but baked beans, egg salad, deviled eggs, cornbread, potato chips, French fries, and even hot dogs and hamburgers just in case you needed a little change in your grilled meat offerings.
Barbecue is a cherished example of the cultural heritage of the South to most Southerners, but within the region, debate as to the nature of barbecue rages on. While barbecue-loving Southerners agree that the "Northern" definition of barbecue a cookout in the back garden is ludicrous, barbecue aficionados also like to argue about what constitutes true Southern barbecue.
State by state, and even town by town, no method is exactly alike. The one non-debatable component of barbecue is pork, and the South is bounded by the parameters of the "barbecue belt" (Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina). With apologies to the dedicated barbecue sauce chefs of Owensboro and south-western Texas, Kentucky's misbegotten notion of mutton, and the beef and mesquite of Texas simply do not qualify as barbecue, and these regions will not be closely examined here.
Why do the regional differences in pig roasting merit attention? Barbecue is emblematic of a lot of things in the South despite intra-regional differences, barbecue is barbecue and barbecue sauce all over the Southern United States. We may argue about which kind is the best barbecue, but very few people assert that the different types are not part of a vital (and delicious) Southern tradition. Despite the Americanisation of Dixie, the South has maintained a distinct regional flavour that makes it special, different from any other part of the United States.
In tracing the differences between the different types of pork barbecue, we demonstrate one example of how, despite geographical disparities, encroaching national homogeneity, and bitter intra-regional disputes, the South continues to cherish those parts of itself which make it peculiarly Southern. This established, our attention turns to the differences between the many types of pork barbecue. These are many and hotly contested. Differences can be gauged by comparing cooking styles, serving methods, side dishes preferred by each camp, and (most contentious of all) barbecue sauce and sauces!
