The Different Faces of Smoked Meat across the United States
The term barbeque gets bandied about across America, from sea to shining sea, from Alaska and Hawaii to Texas, North Carolina and Memphis. It’s spelled differently in different parts of the country and it clearly doesn’t mean the same thing from one region to the next. In some parts of the country, you’ll find distinctly different approaches just by traveling a few miles. Let’s take a look at some of the most well-known barbeque/barbecue styles in America and what makes them unique.
Texas—A Little Bit of Everything
Texas is way too big and smoked meat is too much a way of life across the Lone Star State for there to be a single defining type of Texas barbeque:
- East Texas—In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and the surrounding communities, when you order barbeque, you’ll usually get chopped pork and beef sandwiches. East Texans like to marinate the meat in a tomato-based sauce and will customarily slow-cook it over hickory until it falls off the bone. The sauces tend to be mustard-based and the sandwiches come with sliced onions and dill pickles on white bread.
- Central Texas—Around Austin, you typically won’t get a sandwich, just platters of smoked brisket, gut sausage (spicy hot) and pork ribs. Central Texas pitmasters prefer a dry rub and like to use mesquite, oak or pecan to impart flavor to the meat.
- South Texas—When you get closer to the Mexican border, you’re more likely to find “barbacoa,” a Tex-Mex specialty cooked with a tasty marinade and shredded before serving. The barbeque sauces tend to be sweet and sticky, with molasses as a base.
- West Texas—Unlike most other pitmasters, West Texans prefer direct heat, so their barbeque tends to be grilled rather than smoked. Mesquite is used almost exclusively to impart flavor.
The Carolinas—Similar, But Different
You’ll often hear people talk about “Carolina-style” barbeque, but that’s an incomplete statement. In North Carolina, the old-fashioned pig roast is still the preferred way to smoke meat, with the whole hog on the cooker. The sauce is always vinegar-based, if it’s true North-Carolina barbeque. In South Carolina, while barbeque always means “pork barbeque,” it may be the whole pig, a Boston butt, ribs or even pork sausage. You’ll find different types of sauces in different parts of the state—the traditional mustard-based in south and central South Carolina, vinegar and pepper in the eastern part of the state, and tomato-based sauces everywhere else.
Kansas City and Memphis—A Taste of the Heartlands
Though you can get virtually any kind of smoked meat in KC, the burnt ends are legendary. Cut from the “point” of the beef brisket, with just the right combination of meat and fat, you’ll typically get them slathered in a sweet, thick sauce, with both molasses and tomato flavors.
