There’s a big difference between grilling and barbecuing. Grilling cooks foods over blazing hot heat while BBQ cooks slowly under low heat.
Chandler BBQ comes in all shapes and sizes, but most have similar features. These include hoods, char-grill plates, and solid hotplate cooking surfaces. Vents and dampers let you control flame and smoke levels; some even have tiered grills letting you move food towards or away from naked flame.
This classic barbecue sauce is sweet and smoky with just a hint of vinegar. It’s perfect on meats, poultry, and vegetables. Tasters say it has “a nice balance of sweetness, tomatoey flavor, and subtle smoke,” with none of the flavors overpowering each other. Plus, it’s not as gloppy as some of the other sauces in the test.
Original
This all-purpose BBQ sauce won the top spot in our original tasting for its simple, versatile flavor and ability to enhance many types of foods. It’s thick, rich, and sweet with a hint of smokiness and vinegar. It also has a “nice, smooth texture” that’s easy to use. Tasters say it has a great “tomatoey, smoky flavor with just a touch of sweetness,” making it ideal on many different kinds of food. It’s not as smoky as the other original barbecue sauces in our test, but it’s still a great all-purpose option that’s easy to use and tastes pretty good on everything.
Although each brand of barbecue sauce is unique, most have similar ingredients. They often contain tomato paste, sugar or molasses, cider vinegar, paprika, and Worcestershire sauce (water, anchovy oil, molasses, salt, caramel color), garlic powder, onion powder, dehydrated bell pepper, tamarind extract, and spices. They may also have sodium benzoate and/or other preservatives.
In the broadest sense, barbecue is any kind of cooking done outdoors. It’s the kind of cooking that happens at a party or cookout and can include anything from squirrels to venison to hamburgers. In fact, George Washington wrote in his diary that he went to a barbecue in 1769 and ate squirrel and venison meat.
The word barbecue actually traces back to the Spanish language, from the word barbacoa, which meant a framework for grilling meat over an open fire. It made its way into American cuisine, primarily through southern cooking. It was only after pigs became popular in America that the term began to take off, and it eventually came to mean both a style of cooking and a specific food. Then, in the 1940s, James Beard and MFK Fisher used the terms interchangeably in their cookbooks, and that’s how they are now widely considered to be used.
Sweet
This sweet and tangy bbq sauce is easy to make and is great on chicken or ribs. It’s a simple recipe that has only a few ingredients, so you can customize it to your liking. It can be made smoky or sweet, or as thick or thin as you want. You can also add a little extra spice to it for some kick.
Most store-bought bbq sauces are a lot sweeter than this recipe. And they can contain a lot of sugar and (yech) high-fructose corn syrup. Making your own bbq sauce isn’t hard and can save you money. Plus, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing what goes into it.
A bit of a controversy, the word barbecue has many meanings. It is a cooking method involving flame for heat, the device used to cook, and the event, usually festive and outdoors, at which food cooked using this technique is eaten. It can also be a sweet, ketchup-based sauce used to smother meat cooked using a grill or in an outdoor smoker.
Some dictionaries define barbecue as a device or an event, and others only apply it to the cooked meat that is then served with a specific sauce. But to many people, including the authors of some of the most acclaimed American cookbooks, it is a broad culinary concept. James Beard, for example, used it in his book The Complete Book of Barbecue & Rotisserie Cooking to include all forms of outdoor cooking. The same is true of many other writers, and it is widely accepted in the English-speaking world.
The word is probably derived from the Arawakan word barbakoa, which means framework of sticks that are hung to cure meats. It was brought to Europe in the 17th century, where it became the name of a style of cooking. A few culinary snobs might try to redefine the word and limit it to meats slow-cooked using direct heat, but such a revision would be against widespread common usage. And, anyway, it is quite possible that Homo erectus in Europe, Asia, or Africa was the first person to throw some meat onto hot coals.
Spicy
The word “barbecue” has a long history in the United States. It’s rooted in the Spanish word barbacoa, which was probably first used to describe a framework of sticks used to cure meat. But by the 17th century it had shifted to refer to an event or party where food that has been cooked over a fire or coals is served. The term has been so popular that even though barbecue snobs might like to argue that burgers, hot dogs, and steaks can’t be considered BBQ, it will probably never go the way of “smoke.”
Many people associate the taste of BBQ with summer picnics. It conjures memories of beaten down BBQ shacks with white smoke bellowing out the sides, a dad in a silly chef’s apron standing around a Weber kettle, and sticky menus on cheap Formica tables. Then there are those ribs that are so tender they melt in your mouth, and the tangy sweetness of homemade sauce.
But there is more to a good BBQ than just that savory, sweet, and spicy flavor profile. In fact, scientists have recently discovered a fifth flavor profile to BBQ: umami. This is a flavor that combines saltiness, sourness, and sweetness. Understanding this can make your BBQ better than ever before.
The tongue is a complicated organ with more than 10,000 papillae (pah-pill-uhs). Because of this, using multiple flavor profiles in your cooking can be beneficial. It is also important to know how each of these flavors play off one another so that you can use them in a harmonious way to create your own unique BBQ.
Whether you love to marinate a brisket, baste a rack of pork ribs, or just dip your potato wedges in some delicious BBQ sauce, there’s no doubt that there is something special about the taste of it. But if you don’t have the time, patience, or skills to do your own BBQ, stop by Adam’s Taphouse & Grille in Severna Park and enjoy our BBQ favorites!
Rich & Sassy
This rich, zesty sauce is Famous Dave’s most awarded BBQ sauce. This secret family recipe is a combination of hand-picked herbs and spices, perfect for punching up your ribs, chicken, pork, or beef. It’s fat-free, too. Ingredients: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, TOMATO PASTE, DISTILLED VINEGAR, MOLASSES, SALT, HYDROLYZED SOY PROTEIN, SPICES, NATURAL FLAVOR. Contains: SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE). CONTAINS: SOY.
Recipe makes a gallon of sauce!
Easy to make, deliciously tangy and spicy. A perfect slather on ribs, chicken, pork, or even veggies!