Yellow BBQ Sauce

Prior to a recent trip down South, I had never considered mustard-based BBQ sauce as being a valid form of 'Cue sauce. After the trip, I can’t stop thinking about it. I made this recipe today to go with some pulled pork and was happy with the results. Any additions or subtractions I should try?

Ingredients
2 cups prepared yellow mustard
2/3 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon chipotle Tabasco sauce or you favorite hot sauce
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon granules or 1 cube
2 teaspoons dried rosemary leaves
1 teaspoon celery seed
3 teaspoons mustard powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/BBQ_sauces/south_carolina_mustard_BBQ_sauce.html

Them’s fightin’ words for those of us from the Low Country, South Carolina.

I’m thinking so are the words Tabasco, tomato, bouillon, rosemary and celery.

Teach me, I want to learn.

Carrie does a Napa Valley Mustard Sauce (hot/sweet) for chicken that would probably be pretty good on a variety of BBQ meats. Have no clue what’s in it as I only made it one time, 15 years ago, as she gave me instructions by telephone. The New Yorkers, Jerseyites and Floridians in attendance at that dinner raved about it.

You need to worship at the alter of the Reverend Robert Fleming, grand poobah and chief enchilada of all things barbecue - pork, that is.

He likes to mellow with the yellow?

Can’t resist.

No need to worship at the alter,

suggest you worship at the altar.

signed, the spelling police.

Nice.

You got your religions mixed up, Brother Bob.

I worship at the Eastern NC Temple of the Slow-Cooked, Red Oak Smoked, Basted-with-Cider-Vinegar-and-Crushed-Red-Pepper, Whole Hog, No Tomato or Mustard Within 100 Miles, One True 'Q.

Sorry, I got no help to offer on that SC abomination, mustard sauce. Don’t like it, and if I did, wouldn’t blaspheme by admitting it.

That dastardly yellow stuff will start you down a slippery slope. At the bottom of the slope? White ‘BBQ’ sauce: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/white-barbecue-sauce-10000001084369/

OUCH!

From the most famous (and infamous) BBQ joint in Mustard Land, Maurice’s Piggy Park, West Columbia SC:
http://www.mauricesbbq.com/onlinestore/results.cfm?Category=01&subcat=ALL

That sounds more like salad dressing than BBQ sauce?

Vinegar based rules. Robert, you have it right. I find sugary red sauce more offensive than mustardy versions. Different strokes i guess. White BBQ? Wow.

I doubt Bob would consider that BBQ sauce either. They use it as a baste, though I have sprinkled it on my meat after with good results. I grew up in northern SC just south of Charlotte NC. In Bob’s map it is just below the notch in the SC/NC border. We mainly ate pulled pork with a tomato based sauce. Often on a bun with cole slaw. I never saw a mustard based sauce where I lived even though we were only an hour or so by car from Columbia. I also lived in Charleston for several years and again, don’t remember seeing many mustard based sauces there. I have had them and enjoyed them in the past, but I’m not sure that even in the areas highlighted in yellow on the map, it would be considered traditional BBQ. More of a regional twist.

My buddy Bob wouldn’t understand but I like that mustard sauce. I grew up on the sweet tomato based stuff so I have a special place in my heart for that but I really like that yellow stuff. Neither of these would be considered BBQ sauce in certain parts of NC.

A baste? Do they eat their BBQ dry like barbarians?

I encountered mustard sauce in a band across Northern Florida and Southern Georgia. Once I was going North to Macon, it turned red again.

Probably the greatest of the mustard BBQ joints is Sweatman’s in Holly Hill, SC - kind on the way toward Charleston from Columbia. On;y open on Friday and Saturday. Brushy Creek BBQ in Powdersville, sort of between Clemson and Greenville, also does a nice job - they have advanced the northern boundary of bona fide mustard based Q. Great sauce. Sweatman’s seems to me to have a little molasses in it. Brushy Creek does not.

Dry? Of course not. Properly cooked BBQ is not dry. If it needs sauce, it wasn’t properly cooked. Vinegar-pepper is occasionally added at table, as Joe H. attests, but that is personal preference rather than necessity.

Thanks for posting that recipie, Joe. I enjoy mustard-based BBQ sauce.

NC style is my favorite, though.