Narrowing down the parameters for what constitutes “barbecue sauce” for this taste test was hard. Regional differences in the barbecue world are vast and complex, and sauces are no exception. There’s a Saint Louis–style sauce, Carolina gold sauce, Texas-style sauce, and even an Alabama white sauce. Some styles, like Memphis’s dry rub ribs or East Texas’s brisket, opt for no sauce at all.
But what most people think of when they say “pass the barbecue sauce” is the rich, mahogany-colored sweetness of a Kansas City–style sauce. It’s the style that most barbecue sauces sold at the grocery store emulate, too.
With that in mind, we limited our tests mainly to Kansas City–style sauces that could be found on supermarket shelves. We were seeking a viscous sauce, thick enough to brush onto food without running off, that balances rich, savory sweetness with acid and spice.
For sauces that came in multiple flavor variations, we chose the “original recipe” version, or what seemed closest to it.
To learn more about what makes a great barbecue sauce, we interviewed champion pitmaster Chris Prieto, owner of Prime Barbecue in North Carolina, and judge of many a barbecue sauce competition. We also invited him to participate in our tastings.
But while regionally the idea of “barbecue” connotes long cook times over low heat and smoking wood (often called cooking “low and slow”), in our testing we wanted to acknowledge that a significant number of people use barbecue sauces in more practical applications: home cooking, grilling, slathering, and dunking.
After rounding up 18 candidates, we ran them through a series of tests.
For the first round of testing, we sampled the sauces straight up with spoons, and tried them as a dipping sauce for fries and chicken nuggets seasoned with salt only (they happened to be dino nuggets).
For the second test, I braised 22 pounds of pork shoulder low and slow in an oven to make pulled pork, seasoned only with salt. We mixed a half cup of sauce into a pound of pulled pork, adjusting to make sure each one had the chance to be served at their optimal sauce-to-pork ratio.
We sampled each mixture, taking notes and cleansing our palates with green grapes and Saltines. For this round, we were interested in testing the sauce as an ingredient, to see how it mixed in and stood up (or didn’t) to other strong flavors. Barbecue chef and expert Chris Prieto joined us for this day, providing his opinion on the finalist sauces.
After narrowing down our contenders to six finalists, I toted the sauces to a location where a colleague was testing grills. I brushed them on plain grilled chicken thighs and grilled the thighs for 15 minutes, basting them again about halfway through. We tasted the grilled chicken, noting how the heat had changed the flavors and textures of the sauces.
This article was edited by Gabriella Gershenson and Marguerite Preston.
