Barbecue Sauce

True barbecue lovers, critics and connoisseurs will tell you, “The secret is in the barbecue sauce!” So who has the best barbecue sauce in the country? It literally depends on what your taste buds crave and where you reside! Some like it hot, others mild, some like it sweet and spicy, others like it tangy. Starting in Alabama, let’s travel around the country and see what’s cookin.

Alabama Barbecue Sauce
If you’ve ever been to Alabama, pronounced AL-LEE-BAM-Uh by true deep southerners, you’d know that Alabamians take their Barbecue Sauce serious! It starts with their traditional Alabama Barbecue Sauce, which uses mayonnaise as its base rather than tomato sauce, vinegar, or any of the other more typical barbecue sauce bases. And from there, their sauce flavor goes from mustard base to the Mediterranean.

» The eastern part of the state, Chattahoochee River valley area uses a mustard-based

» The western counties around Tuscaloosa use a sharper, unsweetened tomato/vinegar blend

» In and around Decatur, Alabama, Bob Gibson was credited with inventing a special white mayonnaise and black pepper-based sauce

If you love mouth watering barbecue, you’ve got to travel to Alabama and feast your taste buds some of the best BBQ on the earth.

The Razorbacks use a thin vinegar and tomato base, spiced with pepper and slightly sweetened by molasses

Much of the Peach State fancies a ketchup base flavored barbecue sauce. It you’re a tailgater, you’ll find Georgians flavoring their award winning BBQ sauces with the likes of brown sugar, garlic, onion, black pepper, and oh yeas, occasionally bourbon. Eat your heart out, Jim Beam. In and around Columbus and Savannah, these southerners use a South Carolina-like mustard sauce.

In the big KC, they use a thick, reddish-brown, tomato-based sauce with molasses.

North Carolina is known for its friendly charm, engaging hospitality, Southern Bells and its barbecue sauce! Their BBQ sauce is divided by three regions. The Eastern region delivers vinegar based sauces with pepper flakes. The Piedmont area flaunts a tomato-based sauce with vinegar and the western region serves up thicker tomato-based sauce

All BBQ lovers know that Memphis is the heart and soul of Southern pork barbecue. Although their flavory sauces are based on tomatoes, vinegar, brown sugar and spices, they are not too thick. Their secret blends provide just the right amounts of tang, heat and sweet.

Like their northern brother, South Carolina barbecue sauce provides us with three variations; the Central, Low Country regions of state use a mustard-based barbecue sauce. The Pee Dee region boasts a vinegar and black pepper sauce and the Upstate region mixes it up with either a light or thick tomato sauce.

St. Louis, Missouri is known as the Show Me State and when it comes to barbecue, St. Louisians can show you how to BBQ like a pro. There’s not much like S. Louis barbecue; their sauce, generally tomato-based, thinned with vinegar, sweet and spicy; it is not as sweet and thick as Kansas City-style barbecue sauce, nor as spicy-hot and thin as Texas-style, but it literally makes whoopi to your taste buds.

Texas Barbecue Sauce
Surely, you’ve heard the saying, “Don’t mess with Texas!?” When it comes to barbecue sauce, this definitely holds true! In the Lone Star state, their tomato-based barbecue sauce is usually seasoned with hot chiles and cumin and the best way to describe it is, umh, umh good! P.S. Texas is, Barbecue Country.

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