American

In the South, you usually find pepper sauce in the middle of the dinner table beside the salt and black pepper. Don’t confuse this pepper sauce with a Tabasco-type sauce; this simple seasoning is made from vinegar and whole peppers. Over time the peppers will flavor the vinegar, and the longer it sits, the better it gets! Pepper sauce is used as a seasoning and an ornamental decoration. A few dashes will heighten the flavor of black-eyed peas, all types of greens, barbecue, and many other traditional Southern dishes. Pack your pepper sauce in glass containers of any size and shape. The aesthetic value of the glass combined with the color and variety of peppers creates a beautiful conversation piece.

In my years of cooking at barbecue competitions, I’ve noticed that judges’ barbecue taste preferences follow trends. In the 1990s, barbecue coated with semisweet tomato-based sauce or even a vinegar sop mop appealed to the average judge. As the years passed the consistent winners on the circuit were using a very sweet tomato-based sauce. These rich glazes started a new trend in competition, whereby most all competitors started sweetening their sauce. The following recipe is one of my favorite sauces, which I still use in competition as a sweet glaze for pork ribs. This glaze falls in line with the “sweet” trend but still delivers a flavor that doesn’t overpower the pork.

This recipe was developed specifically for this book, as a match for the Country-Style Ribs on page 198. Because country-style ribs are bulky and not uniform in appearance, a chunky sauce draws attention to the elements of the sauce and away from the clunky appearance of the ribs themselves. If impressing your guest with fancy plating is not your bag, this sauce is “good eatin’” on just about anything. Besides adding distinct flavor, the bits of apple and sweet onion will add a complementary texture to your barbecue.

Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, serves as the state’s east-west dividing point in Carolina barbecue. To the east of the city, whole hog is the meat of choice and simple Eastern Carolina–style vinegar sauce is the preferred slather. West of Raleigh is the land of the pork shoulder, and the “sauce” is referred to as a “dip.” Most Western Carolina dips can be characterized as a vinegar/ketchup–based sauce. Dips can be used as a baste mop, a finishing slather, or a post-cooking soak for the meat.

This is an all-purpose barbecue sauce, with a distinct garlic and tomato flavor. We have used this recipe to rave reviews at the James Beard Foundation and the American Institute of Wine and Food’s “Best Ribs in America” competition. Use it as a finishing glaze or serve it on the side as a dip for any type of barbecue.

I think it’s safe to assume that the history of barbecue in North Carolina traveled from east to west. If you have any doubt, you only need to look at the ingredient difference between the two styles of sauce. In the East a barbecue sauce can be as simple as vinegar, salt, and pepper. Western North Carolina compounds the East’s flavors with a variety of extra ingredients including ketchup, a generous amount of brown sugar, and sometimes Worcestershire sauce (See page 224). Eastern Carolina barbecue has generally consisted of cooking whole hogs, but it is the vinegar sauce that adds an element of uniqueness to its barbecue. The sauce will add an increased level of moisture to the chopped meat while enhancing its flavor with a distinct cider-vinegar tang.

To barbecue aficionados it is clear that Big Bob Gibson was directly influenced by the conventions of Eastern North Carolina–style barbecue. The connection can’t be made through the family tree, but the ingredients in his vinegar-based sop make it obvious. The only difference is that Big Bob didn’t share North Carolinians’ affinity for apple cider vinegar, preferring distilled colored vinegar instead. This straightforward concoction has been mopped onto the restaurant’s pork shoulders since the very beginning. I am pleased to reveal that this four-ingredient “secret sauce” is Big Bob’s original recipe; maybe now the sauce bottles on the restaurant tables will stop disappearing.

Memphis-Style Championship Red Sauce is very similar to our award-winning Big Bob Gibson Championship Red Sauce, which is available at retail outlets, with one key difference: In competition I often add extra sweetener to the sauce to give our barbecue a glossy, sweet glaze. If you prefer a less sweet sauce, reduce the honey and molasses by two tablespoons each.

Superstition across the southeastern United States holds that eating hog jowls, collard greens, and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day will make a person healthy, wealthy, and wise. Hog jowl, which is the cheek of a pig, is a flavorful and fatty meat that is usually cured or smoked. Hard to believe a food as rich and fat-laden as hog jowl is linked to health and prosperity. These meager foods have always been a symbol of plenty for people who are often very poor. The “good-luck” traditions of black-eyed peas in the Southern United States date back to the Civil War, when Union troops ravaged Southern lands, destroying crops and taking all livestock. All that was left were black-eyed peas, which were considered to be fodder for horses and other animals; as a result, many Southerners subsisted on this protein-rich and hearty legume.

Traditional Southern potato salads are usually served chilled and contain either a mustard- or mayonnaise-based dressing. Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q first served a mustard-based potato salad, but over the years the recipe has gradually changed to a mayonnaise version. Because of the high ratio of hard-boiled eggs, it can almost be classified as a potato and egg salad.

A full slab of beef short ribs usually contains 3 to 4 bones and is typically 8 to 10 inches square. The thickness will vary depending on the butcher but ranges from 2 to 5 inches. There are several ways beef ribs are cut and presented to the consumer besides the full slab. The ribs can be individually cut with a size similar to a pork country-style rib, cross-cut across the bones about 1/2 inch thick, or cut into boneless steaks. Beef ribs are less common to my barbecue region than pork ribs. I always look forward to working with cuts of meat that aren’t on the Big Bob Gibson menu. This recipe is one I created while working for the Kingsford charcoal company in 2007. I love the intense beefy flavor of the seasoned juices that result from this preparation; the juices can be drizzled back over the beef ribs or used to flavor a side dish such as mashed potatoes.

Because of their varying sizes and meat types, cook times on country-style ribs are a little difficult to pinpoint. True country-style ribs are very thick and can take up to an extra hour of cook time compared to the ones labeled “shoulder-cut country-style ribs.” If your ribs have a large cross-section of loin meat (light pink color), your cook time should be less or the lean loin meat will dry out. Your best gauge of doneness is a simple squeeze with your fingertips. If the meat feels rubbery, it needs more cooking. The meat from a perfectly cooked rib can be easily pinched from the bone. Over the years I have found that country-style ribs are an extremely versatile cut. They can be grilled hot or barbecued low and slow, and they partner well with dry rubs or marinades, sweet or savory. This recipe utilizes both a dry rub and a sweet sauce to highlight the flavor of the tender meat achieved by low-heat indirect cooking. One more word of advice: Don’t be bashful when applying the sauce. Slop it on!

Because of the slab size and the large bones, beef back ribs are sometimes referred to as “dinosaur ribs.” Back ribs are one of the least expensive cuts of beef. They are prized in the South as comfort food, though they are rarely seen in other parts of the country. If beef ribs are grilled hot and fast they will toughen up and require a good set of choppers to gnaw them off the bone. Braising is the most popular method to tenderize beef ribs. I cook my beef back ribs at a low temperature in a small amount of liquid for a long period of time. This cooking method produces very tender and juicy results, but without the crusty exterior of a grilled rib. While they can be browned on the stovetop over high heat, I brown the ribs in the outdoor cooker to heighten the barbecue flavor. This method approximates the effect of braising on the grill.

In 2001, I made my first national television appearance on Food Network’s Cooking Live with Sara Moulton. I received the invitation after doing a morning radio show with Sara at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Her only stipulation was that my recipes needed to be cooked in an indoor oven. I have always maintained that any recipe written for the kitchen can be duplicated outdoors with more flavor; here my challenge was to prove the opposite holds true as well. I developed a four-stage rib recipe that layers flavors to make up for the extra punch you can only get from cooking with burning coals. It was pretty successful, but changing the recipe back to the outdoor cooker gives these ribs the best of both worlds.

Though the introduction of ribs to Big Bob Gibson’s menu was enthusiastically embraced by the locals, the recipe itself was, well, pretty bare-bones—simply a full-size sparerib seasoned with salt and pepper and slow-smoked. In 1979, Don McLemore offered a bonus to any employee who could improve on Big Bob’s ribs. During the next week the rib usage went up tenfold but profits took a nosedive, as the extremely well-fed pit workers experimented with different preparations. When the smoke cleared two weeks later, Steve Bullard earned a dime raise with this recipe.