BBQ Lie - "the secret's in the sauce". WRONG!

[johnaries]

I'm grilling out some short ribs and I was thinking about this. This message is from people who either don't want you to know the true secret, or from Corporations who expect you to just microwave the meat and pour their brand of BBQ sauce over the resulting crap and say "umm,umm, good!"

The secret is in the SMOKE!

The BBQ sauce that you buy today in the supermarket was supposed to be a marinade, an inferior shortcut to Real BBQ.

If you want REAL BBQ, look for "dry rubbed" ribs. BB King's is one of the few chain restaurants I know of where you can still find it.

Or, you can drive through the back roads of Tennessee and look for small, out of the way roadside drive-through places that have some ugly contraption in the front that looks like an oil drum trned on it's side. It's called a "smoker".

REAL BBQ doesn't need no stinkin' sauce. The herbs and spices are massaged or "dry rubbed" into the meat by hand. Then it's slow cooked in the smoker for 8 hours or more (that's why Corporate Chains don't do it - it takes too damn long!).

If you order the ribs, you should be able to pick up a rib bone and have the meat fall off leaving a clean rib bone. If not, it's not REAL BBQ.

If the meat stays on the bone, use the BBQ sauce and then don't go back. If the meat falls off, skip the sauce and ENJOY!