Okay, then. Let me modify that to I’ve never eaten any in the US that I’d refuse. I wonder what the Maltese do with pork ribs when they’re not trying to emulate us?
Not much that I saw. They’re known for their rabbit, though. I had several traditional rabbit preparations that were delicious.
I’m born and raised in North Carolina. When I was younger I ate chopped pork, but at some point lost any taste for it–the last couple of times I had it I felt like I was eating cat food, and haven’t touched the stuff since. Well-made pulled pork, though, is the food of the gods.
Little known secret: a burrito made with NC-style pulled pork, black beans, hot sauce, and vinegar slaw is goddamned delicious.
I’m going to appropriate your burrito recipe.
When I see somebody driving and pulling a pit trailer, I know I’m in heaven.
I also know this when I see somebody has their own smokehouse built from cinderblocks and a pulley release system.
I’ve done this as tacos (usually sans beans), and it works well there, too, of course. It’s one of my usual things to do with leftovers. Or sometimes even the first time around.
My wife’s from Tuscaloosa, AL so we are partial to Dreamland BBQ (https://dreamlandbbq.com/)…“Ain’t nothin’ like 'em nowhere!” We actually have gotten slabs shipped up to us here in Upstate New York. Their sauce is definitely strongly vinegar-based…and not sweet. Sweet is bad in my book.
Probably the best local barbeque place here in Upstate New York is Dinosaur (https://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/)…They do a decent job on the ribs and have some very good sides.
When we were in Japan several years ago, some American transplants were excited to have us go with them to a restaurant that served American barbeque. I was imagining, given Japan’s generally excellent cuisine and their recommendation of this place, that it would either be a very authentic good American barbeque or it would be barbeque with an Asian twist (e.g., more of a soy-based sauce). Only when the server brought out the gooey-looking ribs did a third possibility become apparent: overly-sweet bad American barbeque. Worst meal we had in our 3 weeks in Japan (other than perhaps the one at a university cafeteria).
Can anyone recommend me a good sauce I can buy?
I dislike very sweet sauces like the generic BBQ sauce you’d get at any restaurant. I had South Carolina mustard based BBQ sauce once and liked it a lot. But when I was in Sacramento I went to a BBQ place with “Kansas City BBQ sauce” which was the perfect blend of sweet but not too sweet.
I don’t barbeque myself or live in a place that has a strong BBQ culture, but Hawaiian BBQ has been making inroads in the Pacific Northwest in the last few years and I’ve never been disappointed by it. It’s typically served as a “plate lunch” with white rice, mac salad, and one or more meats, which may include native dishes like kalua pork (pulled pork with steamed cabbage) or lau lau (pork and fish wrapped in taro leaves and steamed), American-style BBQ ribs or chicken, teriyaki or Japanese-style fried cutlets, fried fish or shrimp, or fusion foods like spam musubi or loco moco (burger steak on rice topped with brown gravy and a fried egg).
It’s not really the first thing that comes to mind when one talks about BBQ, but it’s tasty and it’s filling.
As store-bought KC-style sauces go, I like Stubb’s. I get the ‘Spicy’ version. It has no high fructose corn syrup and none of any other ingredients that make some sauces sound like they were created in a laboratory.
So you say but no restaurant in Colorado seems to be able to make a good barbeque sauce.
For store-bought, I use Stubb’s, Cattlemen’s or Chris & Pitts. If you want to mail-order, both Gates and Arthur Bryant’s are available.
It’s been about a decade since I’ve had them, but the Bone Suckin’ line of sauces I remember being quite impressed with.
Let’s see …
A proper braai has to be wood.
Traditional meats are boerewors, lamb chops, venison, sosaties (kebabs) . But anything will do.
Fish and seafood are a regional specialty in the Cape area - rock lobster, or snoek with apricot butter.
Seriously, if someone’s gone to the trouble of BBQ-ing meat for me, it would be down right rude of me to not eat every blessit morsel within reach. Ignore manners at your own peril.
Unfortunately, the best sauce I know of is a restaurant brand that you can only get from the restaurant. Big Jakes BBQ. You might beat our prices, but nobody beats our meat.
Store bought? I’ll go with Stubb’s, Kinder’s, or Bone Suckin Sauce.
Minor quibble, but we also have to be careful about the use of the term BBQ.
Most (not all) in the thread are talking about various iterations of generally low and slow cooked meats, frequently with smoke as part of the flavor. But too many Americans use BBQ and Grill interchangeably. And that leads to some things I won’t accept, even with the best of intentions. The worst generally being grilled chicken bathed in some hideous HFCS store BBQ sauce then slapped on the grill.
Burned due to the dripping sweet sauce and almost always undercooked in the middle due to the nature of the cooking method.
Again I will fully accept the benevolent intentions of said host and thank them for their consideration, especially at current meat prices, but I won’t eat it.
I kinda blacked out at HFCS 
.
You make a good point re terminology; for me BBQ = meat (beef and pork and iguana). Pretty much everything else is Grilled (chicken, burgers, hot dogs, sausages, armadillo) and never the twain shall meat.
You do realize we are wasting valuable BBQ-consuming time here? RACE YA!
Yeah, poorly grilled chicken is terrible. But I’ll take a properly grilled bird to a smoked/barbecued one every day of the week.
Well, I know you from enough cooking threads to trust your definition of properly grilled. But you would never slather a raw hunk of chicken with the aforementioned HFCS store sauce and throw it on an already overcrowded hot grill.
My step father though… shudder
No, no. Preferably spatchcocked with a rub and/or marinated. No saucing until the end if you want some sort of glaze on it. Favorite styles of grilled chicken include jerk and peri-peri for me.