What You Will Need For This Vinegar Based Bbq Sauce Recipe
- Apple Cider Vinegar – This is the base of your sauce, so picking just the right kind of vinegar is important. Apple Cider Vinegar is tangy without being too savory, making it a great flavor for BBQ sauce.
- Ketchup – Keep in mind that youll be adding sugar as well, so picking a ketchup with the right sugar content can make a big difference in the overall flavor of your sauce. You might need to experiment with this depending on your goal for the end result.
- Brown Sugar – It wouldnt be BBQ sauce without that rich, brown color so make sure you use brown sugar and nothing else!
- Hot Sauce – There are so many hot sauces on the market to choose from and the flavor of the one you pick will be what makes your sauce personal to you and the dish youre creating. Keep your options open with this ingredient!
- Chili Powder
Tips For Vinegar Based Bbq Sauce
This BBQ sauce is insanely simple to make, but here are some tips to get it just right:
- Adjust the spiciness to your liking. For those of you who dont want a super spicy vinegar sauce, cut down on the amount of red pepper flakes you add to the mix. Want a good burn? Sprinkle in extra peppers to give this sauce a good kick.
- Go traditional and omit the ketchup. Want an authentic eastern North Carolina experience? Make this recipe without the ketchup and give your pork a good baste with this thinner, tangy sauce.
- Serve with pork. Vinegar based BBQ sauce pairs perfectly with pulled pork, as the natural pork flavor is enhanced by the vinegar mix. My recipe for Carolina Style Pulled Pork is a classic Americana BBQ that everybody needs to try at least once. You can also cook up some Simple Smoked Pulled Pork and baste as you go or serve with a good drizzle of vinegar BBQ sauce at the table.
Carolina Vinegar Bbq Sauce Ingredients
- FOR EASTERN CAROLINA VINEGAR BBQ SAUCE
- Vinegar. I like to use both white vinegar and apple cider vinegar for sweetness, but you can use white vinegar or apple cider vinegar only, if preferred.
- Red Pepper Flakes. Use as much as youd like.
- Salt and Black Pepper.
- FOR WESTERN CAROLINA VINEGAR BBQ SAUCE ADD
- Ketchup.
- Tomato Paste.
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What To Serve With Carolina Vinegar Bbq Sauce
I always serve Carolina Vinegar with pulled pork and ribs. Its also delicious drizzled on grilled chicken and as a dressing for slaw.
If you love good BBQ and all the good eats that go with it, then THIS post is for you. You need to save, pin and print these recipes to make the best pork BBQ and sides using this sauce that your friends and family will ever eat.
Favorite Ways To Use Bbq Sauce
- Chicken Use on baked chicken for a flavorful meal or drizzled over shredded chicken for a BBQ Chicken Sandwich.
- Pork Delicious with ribs, brisket and definitely with pulled pork. Hello, best pulled pork sandwich ever!
- Burgers Delicious on hamburgers in place of ketchup for a tasty BBQ Burger.
- Pizza Use in place of pizza sauce for a BBQ Chicken Pizza or a Pulled Pork Pizza. Yum!
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What Makes A Good Carolina Vinegar Bbq Sauce
A good Carolina vinegar sauce combines a few basic ingredients: vinegar, sugar, and spices. It should be thin to watery-thin , and it should have an acidic, spicy flavor.
Carolina vinegar sauce should also be quick and easy to make. My recipe only contains 7 ingredients that youll likely have in your pantry or fridge. This recipe does not need to be cooked or boiled you simple combine all ingredients in a jar or sauce bottle and shake to combine. .
Finally, this sauce need to rest to allow the flavors to combine and give it a stronger, more cohesive flavor. I prefer to let my sauce sit for 24 hours in the fridge to allow all the sugar to dissolve and let the flavors mix thoroughly. Remember! This is not a thick sauce, so do not panic if your sauce is quite thin .
Great Video On Eastern Carolina Bbq
To round out this post on Eastern Carolina BBQ Sauce Recipes, I wanted to share the following two videos. The first features Michael and Bryan Voltaggio as they visit Wilbers BBQ in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The second is a video from Munchies.tv featuring the history of Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC.
Wilbers BBQ Goldsboro, NC
Skylight Inn Ayden, NC
For the record: The first public sale of Whole Hog BBQ took place in Ayden, North Carolina, in the 1930s.
184 years later, Sam Jones is carrying on the family tradition of cooking Whole Hog BBQ as the 7th Generation pitmaster of his familys BBQ restaurant, The Skylight Inn. Since 1947, The Skylight Inn has become an icon in the BBQ world for selling one thing and one thing only: chopped Eastern Style North Carolina Whole Hog Porkserved on a bun or in a tray with cornbread.
As Sam Jones says, when the customers arrive at Skylight Inn, theyve already made the decision of what theyre gonna be eating for lunch, its just a matter of how much of it theyre gonna have. Munchies.Tv
Wilbers BBQ and the Skylight Inn both meet the TrueCue.org test for making authentic North Carolina BBQ. To qualify for True Cue NC certification, a restaurant must meet the following criteria:
At present, the folks at TrueCue.org believe there are no more than fifty or so restaurants in North Carolina that serve True Cue .
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How To Make Carolina Vinegar Bbq Sauce The Recipe Method
Heat the Ingredients. Heat all of the ingredients to a large pan over medium-low heat. Simmer for 2-3 minutes. You can also use the microwave to warm it for 30 seconds, which is a common practice. Whisk it all together.
Meld the Flavors. Transfer the vinegar bbq sauce to a mason jar or bottle and let sit for 1 day to let the flavors meld.
Boom! Done! Your Carolina vinegar bbq sauce is ready to serve! Shake it up and serve as desired. Makes about 2 cups, a bit more if youre making the Western NC version. So good, isnt it? Spicy, vinegary goodness.
How Is This Bbq Sauce Unique
Carolina BBQ sauce has an apple cider vinegar base, with red pepper flakes and a few other ingredients shaken in a mason jar.
The meat used is marinated in this style sauce before cooking with more added after cooking.
The more traditional Texas BBQ sauce consists of tomato paste or mayonnaise, vinegar, liquid smoke, and onion powder.
Other spices as well as mustard, black pepper, with sugar or molasses are added as well.
All barbecue sauces are delicious in my book, and Carolina BBQ sauce is up there with the superstars!
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Us Southerners Are Crazy Over Bbq Sauce
Depending what part of the South you are in, you will find a mustard based sauce, sweet and tangy sauce, tomato based sauce, the brown sugar and molasses sauce, the smokey spicy sauce I could go on and on
In the Carolinas, you can not have pulled pork without vinegar based barbecue sauce.
However, we also like to have the sweet and tangy sauce on hand!
My Southern friend Karrie Holland makes a really good sweet and tangy sauce for the crock-pot. If you want to create your own Sweet & Tangy sauce, check out her Slow Cooker BBQ Sauce recipe.
If you are going to purchase the sweet and tangy sauce, skip the chain, massed produced stuff.
Our favorite store bought for the sweet tangy sauce is Cackalacky Sweet Cheerwine Sauce 33.8 Oz . It is made locally, here in North Carolina and when we put it out at our cookouts, the jar goes empty.
North Carolina Vinegar Sauce
Two years ago I went through a truly transcendent experience, one involving the introduction of vinegar to pork. While visiting two of my most favorite people in world in Eastern North Carolina, it was a given we’d be hitting up some local joints like Allen & Son and Ed Mitchell’s The Pit. There I learned, without a doubt, just how well dressed up vinegar could enhance the flavor of barbecued pork.
My instant enthusiasm led me to the purchase of Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, a tome of all things North Carolina barbecue. Captured within those pages was an original recipe for North Carolina vinegar sauce, which I made during my next pulled pork cook, and with just a little cut down on the salt, it tasted pretty good to me.
Little did I know that the evolution of the sauce had come such a long way from that dated recipe, and Serious Eaters let me know it in no uncertain terms. With the breadth of comments that post elicited, I’ve been able to piece together and refine a sauce that I finally feel confident enough is in proper shape to present to the finest smoked swine and the interweb masses at large.
With a couple sugars and salt in the mix, I thought it would be best to give the sauce a quick boil to help dissolve the solids. I believe this step ended up being pretty crucial, since the sauces that got the heat treatment ended up tasting a little more vibrant and cohesive in the end.
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Is There Vinegar In Bbq Sauce
While most of us think of barbecue sauce as thick and smooth with a tomato base, it likely started out as just a mixture of vinegar, salt, and pepper. Its purpose was to tenderize barbecued meats. In fact, East Carolina BBQ sauce is still a thin, vinegar-based sauce for mopping meat while it cooks.
However, even as ingredients like ketchup, tomato paste, molasses, brown sugar, mustard, different kinds of spices, or some combination of these were added, the vinegar remained. This is partially due to its tenderizing properties. But it also helps to thin out the thick sauce bases, balance the sweetness, and add that characteristic tangy flavor.
Vinegar Based Carolina Bbq Sauce Recipe
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This simple-to-make delicious vinegar-based Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce has the perfect combination of tangy, sweet, and spicy for all of your BBQ dishes.
Sauces can oftentimes make or break recipes, especially when it comes to BBQ. If you want to try out some new sauces that will absolutely make your next smoked pork shoulder or smoked ribs amazing, then definitely try my Sweet BBQ Sauce or Mustard BBQ Sauce.
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Best Odds Pulled Pork Sauce
This thin, vinegary sauce is added to smoked pulled pork in the tradition of the eastern Carolinas and can be used on pork while it smokes or added when the pork is pulled. The tangy combination of apple cider vinegar and spices builds flavor and keeps the meat moist, while the black pepper, paprika, and cayenne give a little bit of a kick. This minimalist sauce cuts through the fat and allows the naturally sweet pork to shine.
Cooks in 15 minutes and keeps in the fridge for 1 week.
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North Carolina Bbq Chicken Sauce
Substituting chicken for pork is a quick and easy way to make barbecue because it smokes faster, in half of the time, and it is quicker to pull. This North Carolina barbecue sauce adds the perfect flavors to make smoked chicken. It is thinner and less sweet than the bottled barbecue sauce but does follow the vinegar and ketchup base. Because chicken is blander in flavor by nature and needs extra help to satisfy your taste buds, this sauce is the way to go. Add more pepper or chili flakes for extra spice.
Cooks in 20 minutes and keeps in the fridge for 1 week.
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Ok Then Show Me An Authentic Sc Bbq Mop Sauce Recipe Please
This anonymous submission is actually the second recipe submitted to our site. It is primarily used to mop ribs but works in any standard application.
The mop sauce at once both slightly cool and flavor the meat, and because the sauce is so thin, it penetrates to flavor deeply, our contributor noted.
Were not sure if Dad is the person who submitted the recipe or, maybe, that persons father? Regardless, we pass it on to you.
Dads vinegar-based Mop Sauce recipe works well in Rodney Scotts ribs recipe as well as his Collard Greens recipe, where a vinegar pepper sauce add the critical flavor to the finished dish.
In addition, you can use this recipe in Rodney Scotts Smoked Turkey Recipe. There seems to be a trend here.
A vinegar-pepper BBQ mop sauce typical
- 2 cups apple cider vinegar, Heinz
- 1/2 cup white vinegar, Heinz
- 1/2 cup apple juice
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1 tbsp Kosher salt, or any coarse salt
- 1/2 tbsp black pepper, freshly ground
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
A Short History Of Carolina Barbecue Sauce
The history of BBQ sauce in the U.S. can be traced back to the four types of barbecue that are usually used in basting.
The four types of barbecue in historical discovery order are vinegar, pepper, mustard, light tomato, and heavy tomato.
Barbecue sauces emerged with the introduction of barbecue, which dates back to the 1500s.
This is when the Spanish settlers introduced the pig to American Indians, and the Indians in turn introduced them to the art of slow cooking.The first barbecue sauce was a very simple vinegar, with salt and pepper sauce.
Its origins can be traced back to the coastal plains of North and South Carolina.And back to the Scottish settlers in Williamsburg County, South Carolina.
The second barbecue sauce to emerge was a mustard based BBQ sauce, and its known today as South Carolina style barbecue sauce.
It was greatly influenced by the Germans living in South Carolina from the 1730s to 1750s.
The third style of barbecue sauce recipe found in the Carolinas is the light tomato based BBQ sauce.
Its the same as the vinegar and pepper sauce with a small amount of ketchup to add a bit of sweetness.
Barbecue sauce is like a beautiful woman. If its too sweet, its bound to be hiding something. Lyle Lovett.
Lexington in North Carolina is most famous for this sauce, and its also found in the upper middle part of South Carolina.
It is also popular in the South Carolina Pee Dee region, which is the upper coastal plain area of the state.
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How To Make North Carolina Bbq Sauce
It’s easy! Scroll down to the recipe card for the detailed instructions. Here are the basic steps:
You simply place all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake it well to combine, or use a hand whisk to whisk everything together.
Let the sauce sit and rest for about 30 minutes. This will allow the spices to better dissolve and the flavors to meld. Then you can use the sauce right away in a recipe. Or refrigerate it until ready to use. Shake the jar again before using the sauce.
Best Carolina Vinegar Bbq Sauce Recipes: A History
Being a history teacher, I love reading about the backstory behind the early Eastern Carolina BBQ sauce recipes.
One of the best, if not the very best resource you can pick up if you are interested in the history of North Carolina BBQ is a book entitled Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue by John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed.
You may remember me talking about John Shelton Reed and his efforts over at TrueCue.org a site dedicated to preserving the history of true wood-smoked NC style BBQ and heralding the BBQ establishments in North Carolina that still cook using traditional methods vs. gas or electric smokers.
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