BBQHQThe world of cooking over fire

Sauces, rubs and seasonings

Vinegar-based barbecue sauce

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

What it is

Base
vinegar
When it goes on
either
Burn risk over the fire
low

What it goes with

Grouped by how the pairing is known rather than by how good it is. The first group is somebody else’s statement; the last is ours, and says so.

A source pairs them

A named source says this sauce or seasoning is used with this food. Follow the citation and you will find somebody stating it.

  • Pork shoulderBoth North Carolina styles the Encyclopedia of North Carolina documents are pork, and the Lexington style is specifically shoulder.

Structurally compatible

A structural fact rather than a cultural one: what the sauce is made of against what the cook does to it. Sugar burns over a long direct cook whoever is doing the cooking.

  • Pork belly slicesA thin vinegar sauce carries no sugar, so unlike a tomato sauce it can go on during the cook — which makes it usable on fatty pork where the acid does something the fat needs.

We’d like to measure which pages help, using anonymous analytics with no personal data and no search terms. Declining changes nothing about the site.