Lifestyle

An Evolution of Sauces to Try on Your Texas Barbecue

By  | 
Tony Maples Photography

 

Classic culinary sauces have been the pièce de résistance for many a delicacy over the centuries, but none more so in Texas like barbecue sauce. Barbecue is more than a type of food, it’s a gathering where you pay homage to those that have gone before you in the making of great meals for their friends and families, becoming kings and queens in their own rights! And they do so not just through mere skill, but through the passing of recipes and traditions for cooking great barbecue that endure time. Here are three great barbecue sauces that define the evolution of regional barbecue in Texas.

Basting Sauce

An Evolution of Sauces to Try on Your Texas Barbecue

Photo: Pixabay

When barbecue first took root in Texas, somewhere during the 19th century, those at the helm of the smokers, spits, or grills basted their meats with a mixture of butter, pepper, salt, and vinegar, adding meat drippings to the mix as the cooking time progressed and the juices flowed. Other ingredients that have been added along the way for enhanced flavoring are things like Worcestershire sauce, chipotle, garlic, ancho, as well as lemon juice.

Vinegar-Based Sauce

An Evolution of Sauces to Try on Your Texas Barbecue

Photo: Pixabay

A vinegar sauce was really the first in the evolutionary line of basting to actual sauce development. Using white or cider vinegar (which sometimes varies now with the wide array of choices at local stores) as the base, pit masters have been adding tomato ketchup or paste for thickening, and sometimes go a little heavy on the red pepper flakes to produce a spicy and tangy sauce to counter and add to the fat and smoke flavorings.

Signature Sauces

An Evolution of Sauces to Try on Your Texas Barbecue

Photo: Pexels

Mustard, white, fruit, smoked pepper, and honey infused signature or specialty barbecue sauces have developed as a result of the popularity of Texas barbecue and even from competition cooking. All manners and fashions of flavor are now experimented with and used to imbue greatness into the meat, and subsequently the mouths of its tasters. The process alone of coming up with a great sauce taste to complement a meat seems more like a science than a hobby, but it’s one we’re sure will be slowly perfected and go down in the Texas barbecue history books!