(03-08-2015 09:20 PM)Kaplony Wrote: (03-08-2015 09:04 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: (03-08-2015 10:06 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote: Mustard - A Sandlapper thing - in SC.
Here in the Upstate it is mustard base. You head to Columbia the fools put ketchup on it. You reach the grand strand and it is a mix but mustard is still there. Oddly the local mustard base in the grocery store is from Savannah and Charleston.
No they don't.
Mustard based BBQ sauce was developed by the German immigrants who settled the region from Orangeburg and Barnwell areas up the Congaree and then up the Broad and Saluda Rivers from the Ninety-Six region over towards Winnsboro.
In the PeeDee region you get the Vinegar & Pepper Eastern NC style, in the Upstate you get the Western NC tomato based style, and along the Central Savannah River to Lake Hartwell areas you get Ketchup based.
South Carolina is the only state where you can find all four distinct BBQ sauce styles.
http://amazingribs.com/recipes/BBQ_sauce...sauce.html
It sounds like the southwest part of the state is where they probably also start cooking a whole menagerie of animals (beef, chicken, I've even heard about "barbecued" sheep in Kentucky) and calling it barbecue.
I don't see a great moral distinction between Western NC "tomato based" and the rest of the South's "ketchup based." If you're mixing tomatoes, vinegar, water, sweetener and seasonings you're making ketchup. Look at the ingredients on the back of a bottle of ketchup -- Western NC barbecue sauce is generally made from the same stuff. It might be thinner, the spices and seasonings may be better chosen, the proportion of tangy/sweet/spicy may be more appropriate for an adult palette, and it's definitely better tasting than Heinz 57, but it's still ketchup.
I love Hash over Rice, and I try to grab a plate whenever I'm driving down I-95 (recommendations of places within a few miles of the highway are welcome!). I've been to the big chain with all the confederate memorabilia for sale in the front (something-gers), and I don't remember it tasting very smoky.
I think that's the overall problem with getting away from pure Eastern sauce. The additional flavors, whether it's tomato in Western Carolina or Georgia or Tennessee or mustard in South Carolina or blood orange in some bistro in the Napa Valley, can flatten out the complex flavors created by the cooking method (long smoke) and material (preferably whole hog, but some hog parts are pretty good on their own if the former isn't possible -- boston butts/shoulders are a decent compromise and deserve respect) that makes barbecue.
If you're compromising on cooking method (anywhere from using gas heat and wood chips to crock pot and liquid smoke) or materials (from smoking a shoulder or two and a slab of ribs and some other parts and pulling it all together, to trying to use a pork tenderloin or God forbid a chicken), then I can see the temptation to distract the eater with fancy tomatoes, mustards and blood oranges. But call it what it is: compromise.
We all do it. Just the other day, my wife came home from the grocery store with a sale pork shoulder, and put it in the crock pot (no liquid smoke, thank God). After it was done, she got out the forks and pulled it. I got a bun, and put some St. Augustine, Florida Saville Orange and Datil Pepper-flavored "barbecue sauce"/ketchup on my sandwich. It was good, pork usually is, but if there wasn't a foot of snow on the ground and I didn't have too much to do this weekend I could have turned that poor pig's shoulder into something great on my charcoal setup, with no sauce but a little bit of the leftover simple vinegar and pepper sop needed.
If I lived out in the country, with plenty of extra land to spare for a real cinder block and chicken wire and tin roof pit, and no neighbors to complain about all the smoke, and a whole hog instead of just a shoulder, and plenty of people to feed, I could have made real no-compromise barbecue. To sauce it would be a sin (but a little more sop is okay).