As barbecue has increasingly become a national phenomenon, barbecue sauce has changed. The condiment still generally conforms to our basic regional notions: Kansas City tomato-based, South Carolina mustard-based, North Carolina vinegar- and-pepper-based. But its flavors have expanded to reflect modern food trends in high-end, healthful and ethnic eating.
Barbecue sauce manufacturers boast that their products are gluten-free and contain honey instead of high-fructose corn syrup. They produce boutique batches. They select from a global pantry.
About one-quarter of our contest entries made the first cut. We tested those, and our panel of 11 tasters sampled them on their own and with toast. Afterward, I tried the top-five-ranked sauces on smoked ribs and pulled pork.
Ingredients were limited to 10 per recipe, yet they covered the gamut: grape jelly, bourbon, caraway seeds, sauerkraut, smoked beer, mango chutney, Liquid Smoke, tarragon vinegar, fresh oregano, guava paste, curry powder and rhubarb, among many others. Some contestants were particular about their tablespoons of hot sauce: “Louisiana-style, but not Tabasco.”
Some sauces were old family recipes, others developed through careful trial over time. What particularly appealed to me was their handcrafted nature. Choosing the top three was a fun challenge.
I loved the complexity of District native Christopher Gresham’s very thick sauce, which placed third. He smokes tomatoes and green bell peppers, roasts garlic, then purees those with other ingredients and cooks them for an hour. I particularly admired the fastidiousness of his adding rendered bacon fat a quarter-teaspoon at a time.
“I wanted to make everything from scratch,” says Gresham, who, single at 24, has either boundless patience or a lot of time on his hands. He learned to grill from his father, who even smokes the dressing for his Thanksgiving turkey.
Second place went to Keith Williams, 54, of Hollywood, Md., whose beautifully balanced version of a standard ketchup-based sauce is zippy with cayenne while sweet — but not cloying — with brown sugar. The kicker is the lemon zest, which adds a refreshing twist. Every time I thought I was finished “testing,” I pulled another piece of rib or shoulder and slid it through the bowl of sauce.
Married and a father of six, Williams grills and smokes on a Weber (“charcoal, no gas, with wood chips”) that his kids gave him for his birthday 10 years ago.
“I just mess around in the kitchen,” he says. “When I get aggravated, I like to get into the kitchen and mess around. It relaxes me.”
District resident Zora Margolis, 63, took first place with her simple but ever-so-marvelously tweaked version of a mustard-based sauce. Maybe it was the ancho chili powder or the fresh lime juice or the “few squirts” of Sriracha, but what she calls her Spicy S.C. Mustard Sauce yields just the right combination of savory purr and tangy attitude.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-barbecue-sauces-that-won-our-hearts/2011/05/17/AFznCaAH_story.html?wprss=rss_style
