Here's What The Oldest Versions Of American Barbecue Sauce Tasted Like

Smoky barbecue is one of the most iconically American styles of cooking out there, but what you get today is often a long way from what the first American barbecue tasted like. While some styles have cuts of meat they specialize in, like Texas and its brisket, most styles of regional BBQ in the U.S. are more associated with specific sauces. Everyone knows the Kansas City style of sweet, thick molasses sauce, and probably the tangier tomato-based sauces as well. Or you get something like Memphis dry-rub that is primarily known for its lack of sauce. But the original barbecue sauces in America were much simpler than the ones we know today, and echoes of it survive in the vinegar sauces of the Carolinas.

Before it was sweet or used tomato, American barbecue was dressed with vinegar and little else. The earliest styles of barbecue in the U.S. evolved in the Carolinas and Virginia. The smoked barbecue style was cooked by enslaved people and adopted from the Caribbean, while the British who settled in the area brought a penchant for basting meat. The use of vinegar could have also come from Britain but may have first been introduced by the Spanish in Florida. Either way, those early sauces were sharp, tangy, and very simple. They usually only consisted of vinegar, salt, pepper, and maybe some spicy hot peppers. Later, French and German immigrants to the area would add butter to the mix, then mustard, kicking off the first evolutions of American barbecue.

Eastern Carolina was the epicenter of this early barbecue, and so it's little surprise that this region is where the most similar styles are still practiced today. Like early settlers, who relied on cheap and easily cared for pigs, "whole hog" pork barbecue is still preferred in the region. The vinegar sauce promised land is North Carolina, where in the coastal regions, you'll find thin, spicy vinegar sauces little changed from hundreds of years ago. In barbecue, this is called a "mop sauce" because of how its brushed onto the meat during cooking. It's used both as a basting agent, and as sauce applied at the end of cooking. It's flavor is all based around the simple idea of balancing the rich, fatty flavor of pork with something bright and acidic. Nowadays, the vinegar used is usually cider vinegar, but even distilled white vinegar works.

For those who prefer a slightly sweeter style of barbecue, there is also Lexington barbecue, which shows up more in Central and Western North Carolina. This style uses a similar vinegar-heavy sauce, but cuts the bite a bit with some ketchup, making it a little more complex and thick like a standard barbecue sauce. And of course, you have the Carolina gold style of South Carolina, which combines to the acidity of vinegar sauce with mustard. But if you want a taste of the original barbecue sauce, vinegar, hot peppers, and salt are all you need.