"Barbecue is 99% perspiration and 1% sauce."Vince Staten
There are several regions which have evolved their own unique barbecue and sauce styles, often influenced by the available meats and their ethnic origins.They are not all sweet and red! Their flavors and history are fascinating. They are also the subject of much controversy and villification between regions, each claiming authenticity. Some break down regional styles into microcosms reminiscent of wine appellations, claiming "authenticity" in one state and fraud in another.
In his 1993 book "Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats", Raymond Sokolov, has a superb essay on authenticity focused on regional styles. Some highlights: "Unfortunately authenticity is as slippery a notion as happiness... Texan chiliheads abhor beans; New Mexicans routinely put them in their version of chili. Similarly, each village along the French Mediterranean coast has its own 'authentic' mixture of fish for its own 'authentic' bouillabaisse. Aren't these really distinct regional variations, each authentic for its town or state? If so, to what size must we whittle down our definition of region...? There is, in fact, no limit to this. In my family people disagree about the authentic way to make dishes handed down from the same older relative." Then he nails it "Publication leads to codification... Cookbooks not only preserve, they overdefine and delimit cooking when they set forth a single version of a dish and, explicitly or implicitly, suggest that other versions are spurious."
The articles below have more detail and recipes.
If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad free experience and much more!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 4,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner like TV network or a magazine publisher to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club, but please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get 21 great benefits. We block all third party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial membership, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
2) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer.
3) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different than your membership login.
Moderators