The Magic of Barbecue Sauce!
Barbecue is not an English word, it comes from a group of Caribbean Indians that dried meat on a high wooden platform. Can you believe it as American as the concept of a big cookout being called a barbecue is? The shortened for BBQ is used to describe this amazing cooking party by most people now.
It seems that every region has its own style of barbecue and everyone has their own recipe for barbecue sauce since it is such a part of the scene in America. The center of the cooking is actually the sauce. The sauce gives the food its flavor no matter the kind of meat you cook. Barbecue sauce recipes become a family secret or heirloom that is handed down from one generation to the next in some parts of the country like the southwest.
Tasty and very simple to make in fact probably the simplest to make combines two cups of ketchup with two tablespoons each of Worstcheshire Sauce and Sugar. The imagination is the only thing that limits a recipe for barbecue sauce.
The entire flavor of a basic recipe can be changed. Add chopped onions to the example and achieve an entirely different result. Instead of the onion you can use basil, garlic or oregano to get something new to try. You can make a new barbecue sauce by using all of these at once. The possibilities have no end.
There are cooks that believe some sort of beer must be in a barbecue sauce for the right flavor. Tequila is the perfect ingredient for some. Kentucky bourbon is the key for some. Once again creativity and ones own tastes are the only thing that limits them with the recipe.
Several foods are better when they are homemade. Convenience and ease are the only reasons we purchase the store bought variety. There are a number of commercially manufactured barbecue sauces that are better than homemade versions. They have their own secret recipe as well.
There are two reasons to use barbecue sauce. Marinating the meat can be done in the sauce or you can baste the meat with it while you cooking. Sauces that are good for marinating are not always good for basting. Vinegar or lime juice are acidic and should be in a barbecue sauce used for marinating for the meat to absorb the flavor.