American Barbecue Traditions
From the Carolinas to Tennessee and Kansas City to Texas, every region embraces unique barbecue traditions

By Douglas Brown

You've ordered a pulled pork sandwich in North Carolina, a rack of ribs in Memphis, "burnt ends" in Kansas City and chopped brisket in Texas. And you swooned over it all. You don't need to hop on a flight or plan a road-trip, though, to get in touch with your inner pitmaster.

The roots of American barbecue dig deep into the South, where even neighboring counties can have different approaches to barbecue, never mind different states.

Consider North Carolina, a state with a barbecue tradition that, by American standards, qualifies as ancient.

• In eastern North Carolina, you'll eat shredded meat from an entire pig, which will be doused with a peppery vinegar sauce. Drive west a few hours from the coast, though, and the meat likely will come just from the shoulder of the hog, and the sauce will contain tomato.

• At least two things remain constant: pigs and vinegar. North Carolinians like their sauce thin and punched with vinegar, whether it comes with tomato or not.

Head due west out of North Carolina and soon you'll glide into a similarly long, skinny state: Tennessee. Keep going until you're nearly in Arkansas, and then stop in Memphis. If it happens to be May, you may be in town for "Memphis in May," the largest barbecue competition and festival in the world. Either way, you'll encounter barbecue restaurants and stands all over the city — there are more than 100 barbecue outposts in Elvis' city — and several different styles and approaches to smoking pig.

• Like North Carolina and much of the South, pig is king in Tennessee.

• And in Memphis, much attention is slathered upon the ribs of the beast, although rib treatments differ sharply. Some Memphis outposts stake their reputations on "dry-rubbed" ribs, where the meat is generously rubbed with a mixture of spices, smoked and then served. If you want sauce, you've got to apply it yourself. Other places favor "wet ribs." Here, the ribs are lacquered with tangy barbecue sauce before, during and after cooking.

• Another Memphis staple is the pulled-pork sandwich, a cheap hamburger bun stuffed with smoked pork shoulder that is topped with coleslaw.

Yes, they worship at the altar of the smoker in Memphis, but you'll find devotees no less fervent and reverential — in temples as storied and weathered — in Kansas City, the Midwest's barbecue capital, another city with upwards of 100 barbecue joints and a gigantic, annual celebration of livestock and agriculture, called American Royal, that twirls in large part around its barbecue competition.

• The pig receives its smoky due in Kansas City, but the city, which straddles Missouri and Kansas, long has been a commercial center for cattle, and here you'll find at least as much beef as pig.

• Among other things, Kansas City barbecue is known for its sauce, which leans much heavier on the tomato than those of Memphis and North Carolina, with a healthy wallop of molasses thrown in. Many of the thick barbecue sauces you can buy in supermarkets are based on Kansas City style, but don't confuse the mass-produced stuff with the small batches of ambrosia Kansas City pitmasters concoct in their kitchens.

• And whatever you do, experience "burnt ends," the crunchy, charred ends of brisket slabs, a Kansas City culinary quirk worthy of national coronation.

Finally, there's Texas, a barbecue nation unto itself.

• Cattle are hallowed in Texas, so it's no surprise the sometimes horned, always big, ruminants receive barbecue sanctification in the Lone Star State. Brisket reigns in Texas, but Texans like their chopped beef, too, as well as beef ribs.

• But they don't reject the pig. Sausages, called "hot links" and often containing pork, are a Texas specialty. Pork ribs? They smoke 'em righteously in Texas.

• When it comes to meat of any kind, Texas-style tends to remain fixed on the meat itself. Barbecue is no exception. Just as Texas chili shuns beans and just about everything else but beef and spices, Texas barbecue does not as a matter of course venerate sauce. Most meats are rubbed with spices and smoked. Sauce? In some places, at least, if you want some it will come on the side.

• And where most barbecue is smoked over hickory, oak or a handful of other similar hardwoods, Texans often go for mesquite, which has a unique flavor.