Sauces, rubs and seasonings

Sorted by whether they can meet the fire. The burn behaviour is a structural fact about sugar rather than a matter of style, and it is the single most useful thing to know before picking up a brush.

• هريسةchilli base

  A Tunisian chilli paste, inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2022. Sun-dried chillies ground with salt, garlic and coriander, made at home and kept in a jar — a provision rather than a barbecue sauce, and BBQHQ says so rather than adopting it as one.

• Chakalakaother base

  A South African vegetable relish documented as commonly served alongside the meat at a shisa nyama, with boerewors and mieliepap. Served at the table rather than cooked with anything.

  Shisa nyama

• Eastern North Carolina vinegar saucevinegar base

  Cider vinegar, red pepper and salt, brushed onto a whole hog while it cooks. No tomato and no sugar, which is why it is the one American barbecue sauce that can go on from the beginning rather than the end.

• Lexington diptomato base

  Thin and tomato-based, served at the table with chopped or sliced pork shoulder. The Piedmont answer to the eastern sauce, and the difference is when it meets the meat as much as what is in it.

• Alabama white saucemayonnaise base

  Mayonnaise, vinegar and black pepper, and the chicken goes into it after it comes off the smoke rather than the other way round. The only mayonnaise-based barbecue sauce in this catalogue, and it works because it never meets the fire.

• Chimichurriherb base

  A herb and garlic condiment served at the table at an asado, described by the City of Buenos Aires as parsley, oregano, garlic and onion. It is not cooked onto the meat and carries no sugar, so none of the burning behaviour of a tomato sauce applies to it.

  Argentine asado

• Salsa criollaother base

  The other Argentine table condiment the City of Buenos Aires names alongside chimichurri: bell peppers, onion and tomato. A fresh chopped salsa rather than a cooked sauce.

  Argentine asado

• たれsoy base · burns if applied early

  One of the two seasonings the Japan National Tourism Organization names for yakitori — a sweetened sauce, as against shio, which is salt. Being sweetened, it behaves over a fire the way any sugared sauce does.

  Yakitori

• 쌈장other base

  The paste eaten with grilled meat in a leaf wrap at a Korean barbecue. The Korea Tourism Organization describes ssam as meat placed on lettuce or perilla with ssamjang added, eaten in one bite — so it is a condiment assembled at the table rather than a sauce for the grill.

  Korean grilled meat

• Sate sauceother base

  The savoury sauce served with sate, which the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism describes as accompanying marinated meat grilled on thin bamboo skewers over charcoal. BBQHQ records that it is served with sate and does not publish a composition, because the retrieved source does not give one and the variants are attributed to places rather than to a recipe.

  Indonesian sate

• Tomato-based barbecue saucetomato base · burns if applied early

  A sauce family built on tomato with sugar and acid. The structural facts here — that it contains enough sugar to burn over direct heat — are technical rather than cultural, which is why they can be stated while the regional attributions cannot.

• Vinegar-based barbecue saucevinegar base

  A thin, acidic sauce family with little or no sugar, which is why it behaves completely differently over heat from a tomato sauce.

• Salt and pepperDry rub · Salt-forward, Pepper-forward

  The simplest seasoning there is, and the one Central Texas barbecue is known for. Coarse salt and coarse black pepper, and nothing whose sugar can burn over a long cook — which is why it survives twelve hours in a way a sweet rub does not.

• 塩Dry rub · Salt-forward

  One of the two ways yakitori is seasoned, per the Japan National Tourism Organization: shio is salt, as against tare, which is a sweetened sauce. The choice between them is the seasoning decision at a yakitori counter.

• Turkish skewer marinadeMarinade · Aromatic and spiced, Salt-forward

  Go Türkiye distinguishes şiş kebab — marinated lamb or beef on an iron skewer — from çöp şiş, which uses wooden skewers and smaller, fattier pieces. The marinade is what the distinction turns on alongside the skewer.

• Shisa nyama marinadeMarinade · Aromatic and spiced

  South African Tourism describes the shisa nyama sequence as choosing the meat at the butcher, which is then marinated and grilled on site — with fatty cuts preferred, to keep it from drying.

• Sweet glazeGlaze · Sweet

  A sugared sauce brushed on towards the end of a cook. The Southern Foodways Alliance documents a thick sweet sauce with smoked hog shoulder in east Tennessee; the structural fact BBQHQ can add is that the sugar in it burns, which is why it goes on late.

Smoke is a seasoning too — the Culinary Institute of America says so in those words, and says not to overdo it. It has its own section, and its own honest problem: no institution publishes the wood-and-meat pairing chart everybody repeats. Smoking woods.

• Recipes and quantities. These records describe what a thing is and what it is for. Where sources vary — and for most of these they vary enormously — asserting a canonical recipe would be inventing one.
• Similarity scores. Flavour directions are listed; nothing is scored against anything.
• Claims about authenticity. Every tradition link here is qualified and cites the source that documents it — a tourism board, a city government, a food-studies alliance.