Guy Fieri Has Barbecue Sauces on the Market - BBQ Sauce Review

Guy Fieri is Out of the Gate with Barbecue Sauces
I'm a fan of Guy Fieri and his Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." So, when I got an email from Keith letting me know that Guy has a barbecue sauce line, I was curious. This is a rural area, so it's not likely that we see new products early on, and Keith said that he'd send me sample bottles. That's really the only way I'd get to check out brand new barbecue sauces and I'm known to be quite (sometimes brutally) honest, so I cleared out some time on the schedule to grill this week.

Four New Barbecue Sauces by Guy Fieri
There are four barbecue sauces in the Fieri line. Those are:

Carolina #6 Barbcueque Sauce & Marinade: Mop and Slop
Bourbon Brown Sugar Barbeque Sauce: Sweet & Sticky
Kansas City Barbeque Sauce: Smoky & Sweet
Pacific Rim Barbeque Sauce: Wok & Sauce

NC #6 Barbecue Sauce by Guy Fieri

Since I'm a North Carolina girl, I thought I'd go with the hard test first and grill with the North Carolina #6. I would drop the "slop" part of the name. In the South, slop is what you feed to the pigs. My Grandma always had a "slop bucket" where you'd put the food scraps which were fed to the pigs. OK. The word likely does not have the same conotations everywhere. I just move on as far as that.

Chicken Marinating in Chef Guy Fieri's NC #6 Barbecue Mop Sauce
North Carolina has a very different approach to barbecue and barbecue sauces. Most big name brand BBQ sauces that say North Carolina are really Kansas style with some extra vinegar. In other words, they are tomato based and thick but just add some vinegar flavor.

I shook the bottle of Fieri NC barbecue sauce, and it seemed more in line with what we do here. Then, I opened the bottle, and it was, indeed, a vinegar based barbecue mop sauce and also smelled true to the area (vinegar kick and some heat from pepper seeds). Flying colors on test one. I do love barbecue sauces from other areas, but I don't like to see one billed as North Carolina if it's not.

With most barbecue sauces, you put the sauce on the last 5 minutes or so to carmelize. With North Carolina sauce, you do literally mop it on and often while the food is grilling or smoking. You can also marinate the food in a mop sauce, so that's what I did as you can see above. That just lets the flavor settle in the food.

Barbecue Smoked Chicken on the PK Outdoor Cooker with Guy Fieri BBQ Sauce
There are a number of methods for grilling with mop sauce. I decided to go with an offset on the charocal on my PK cast aluminum grill and then slow smoke the chicken after letting it "set."

The steps for barbecue smoking North Carolina chicken this way are:

1. Let the chicken marinate in the mop sauce.
2. Start the coals and let the charcoal get hot. Then, put the coals on only one side of the grill, so that you have a hot and cooler side. You can do this on gas as well by just heating one side.
3. Put the chicken over the hot coals, until you get grill lines.
4. Keep mopping the chicken as it grills/smokes. You can do this all along.
5. Flip the chicken on the hot side of the grill and let it grill mark again.
6. Keep mopping.
7. Move the chicken off the hot coals to the cooler side of the grill. Shut the lid. Let the chicken cook off until done.
8. You can check the chicken and mop it with the sauce all you like, but don't overcook it, or it will be tough.

North Carolina mop barbecue sauce is unique, so I would not have been shocked if Guy Fieri had offered up a hybrid that was more tomato and thick with just some vinegar and pepper kick. He went beyond my expectations with having a sauce that really is true to the small niche area.

With this being said, I would again note that home grillers need to understand mop sauce. It is not like other thicker barbecue sauces. You can use it as a marinade. You can mop it or (if you prefer the term) baste it on. It's a thin type barbecue sauce so the grilling is a little different.

Yehaw! My Grilled Chicken Rocked with Guy Fieri NC Barbecue Sauce
If North Carolina barbecue sauce is done right - both as far as the sauce and how it's used on the food - then it's a great way to add flavor. I have found that it's usually just North Carolina people who "get it." So, I must say that I'm impressed that Guy Fieri does offer a NC barbecue sauce that is true to the area. I give his sauce the thumbs up, and I'm a tough critic on our local style. If you want to try to do North Carolina style barbecue and don't want to make your own barbecue sauce, then I'd say you can't go wrong with Guy Fieri's North Carolina #6.

A & M Grill Barbecue Joint in Mebane North Carolina - Review

I have driven down I40 for years now, but I've never stopped off in Mebane (meh-ban) to check out A & M Grill which is actually a North Carolina wood burning barbeuce joint. I haven't been avoiding it at all - no way - just never seems to be the exit at meal time.

This week, I took my son up to Chapel Hill which is only a half hour or so beyond Mebane to his new apartment and his summer job, and we planned our time around getting to the Mebane exit for lunch. We are, after all, a BBQ family, and it's a darn shame to miss a wood burner (barbeuce place that cooks over wood) especially when it's not all that far away.

A & M is off I40 exit 153 with a left turn on NC 119 if you are headed east on 40. Not sure on the flip side. You go about 3 miles and turn right on US 70, and then the barbecue place is on the left around a half mile. So, it is not far off the main road if you are traveling I40.



Now, you could see A & M was not a fancy place from the outside, and it was the same inside. Frankly, be quite suspect it you go to a place that adveritises barbecue in NC and looks too uptown. You are probably going to get electric smoked barbecue or even worse gas or electric smothered in liquid smoke sauce. I'm not a picky eater, but that just gags me.

A & M Grill Barbecue did not have the kitche decor that we get with most barbecue joints here in North Carolina. There were no deer heads or plasic pigs and such. If I had not smelled the smoke in the air, I would have guessed fish camp (fish restaurant - NC). They had dark blue on the top of the walls and tables with blue pattern wipe off tablecloths. It was homey and worked as a barbecue joint, but the wife must not have let the owner (if the owner is a man) hang up all his stuff all over like many of the NC BBQ restaurants.



You had a few choices on the menu. I think there did have fried fish and burgers and a couple of things, but I do not hunt up barbeuce joints to eat anything other than barbecue.

They also had specials every day, and Tuesday was a 2 sandwich with tea (sweet of course) for $3.95. Now, that's darn cheap. I would not cook pork for hours and sell it for that, but they did have that nice special. So, I got that. And, my son got the barbecue plate with two sides.

One thing that was odd to me was that slaw would be a side with the plate but came on the sandwiches automatically. We are not a slaw family, and I just know someone is gonna take our Southern cards away some day over it. So, I just did a "hold the slaw," and the kid got French fries (like always) but also fried okra which he shared with me - the big fried okra fan. Since I gave him my second sandwich, that was a good swap off.



You can see a barbecue plate here.

There is the smoked pork barbecue with sauce. They sauce that in the kitchen rather than at the table. Beware the bottle of red stuff on the table is ketchup which I hope you do not slop on your barbecue. The meat was good and smoky, and the sauce was quite tangy with vinegar but heavier on the red (tomato) than I'm used to. I prefer that on the table and to taste.

The fries were basic thick cut steak fries and hot, so they were fine. The oil was clean, so they were not greasy. No seasonings. Good basic fries.

The fried okra was very good. Some of it isn't. They do okra well at A&M Barbecue, and I appreciate it. The man next to our table (a regular who the waitress called by name) asked if we liked the okra and said it was his favorite. I told him it was very good, and it was.



My son enjoyed the heck out of his last meal before back to his college town where he does not eat so well. He lost 40 lbs the first year with the cafeteria, and he was not a big kid to start with. He is in an apartment now, and I hope he uses my recipes and also some of the good places to eat I've found near UNC like A&M in Mebane.

The barbecue was a little different from our piedmont Lexington style barbecue with a bit more red or tomoato in there, but it was really good and had that nice smoked flavor. Also, the staff at A&M were very nice as well as the locals eating there. So, it was a relaxed and fun lunch before I took the kid back for the summer, and with my extra sandwich to eat, he had enough for a carry out box on his full barbecue plate for dinner. So, I know he ate good twice that day at least.

Pickin' Pigs and Banjos Down South - Real Barbecue from a Southern Perspective

Big North Carolina Barbecue Cooker at a Country Pig Pickin'

Up north folks barbeque, which is grilling food over charcoal or gas. Don’t confuse with barbeque in the south which is pork meat slow cooked and served with sauce. Northerners use BBQ as a verb to indicate a style of cooking while southerners use the word as a noun and to mean one specific dish which is universal to the south and very much a part of the culture.

Confusing the way the term BBQ is used can be very . . . well . . . confusing.

I remember my shock when I ordered BBQ up north and got a plate of beef ribs. Now I like ribs, but ribs are ribs and BBQ is BBQ. And, it’s pretty sad to get ribs when you want BBQ.

On the flip side, I know that some of my northern students are plumb shocked when they order BBQ up here and get pork on a bun with slaw when they are expecting something grilled up like back home. That probably ranks up there with ordering a burger all the way at a southern restaurant and trying to figure out what that chilli and slaw are doing on there or having to say chilli beans to get any beans in the chilli.

Barbeque dates way back in the south.

You have to remember that the south was very poor (OK—we still are for the most part) and that pigs fend well in the wild. Pigs even made TV in the Australian outback on Survivor (though that did have that gross out factor). Those pigs are some hearty little critters that can scrounge around and make do when other critters would dry up and keel over.

When you’re talking tough and stringy critters running wild, then you have to think a bit about how to cook. Though pigs now are farmed and fed and much more mellow as far as taste and texture, we are still not talking prime rib. My apologizes to all pig farmers. That tenderloin is primo, but some parts of the pig . . . well . . . guy-friend we need to sit down and talk about that crackled skin and those pigs feet.

If you have a crock pot, then you know that slow cooking can soften up shoe leather. So, slow cooking those old pigs was the way to go. But, some folks slow cooked much better than others and BBQ became an art as well as a social tradition in the south. The cream floated to the top (as it always does) and the best pit cooks got noticed, and pit cooks figured out it was better to cook at an all day bash and have some company since pit cooking pork does take all day.

BBQ was mostly take out in mid century and centered around the smoke house and maybe a shed type addition with a few tables and chairs for travelers. This was one time when white folks crossed the tracks. The BBQ was terrific and it was seen as somewhat “cool” to slip across town and get some good eating. That’s not to say that BBQ was not done in the white communities. It was. Many a white church dinner or political rally centered around picking a pig, but most of the take out places were black owned and operated (and many still are).

The basic process at the smoke joints or at the picnics/rallies was to start cooking early and to cook all day. It was important to get the coals just right and to maintain that even and constant heat so that the meat was cooked through but not burned in spots. We’re talking a very high maintenance process which is why you don’t see fast food BBQ restaurants popping up all over. You can’t do BBQ fast, and if you do, then it is not really BBQ.

Once the meat is done to perfection, then it is sliced or chopped up. Farther west it is pulled, but in the deep south (not including FL) then it is never pulled. Pulling is along the grain and gives a stringy taste which is not southern even though some southern states on the other side of the Appalachians mostly will sell you that.

BBQ is usually bought by the tray which means that you get a cardboard container that is split with meat and slaw. Some slaws are white and some red. The red is generally spicy and has tomatoes and hot pepper while the white is mild and mayonaise based.

With the meat/slaw you get bread and hushpuppies. The bread is to make a sandwich out of the meat and is our white bread which is light and airy. Some BBQ places give you buns instead so that you don’t get soggy bread (which I hate—do not pass a tomato sandwich my way please). Those hush puppies are corn bread deep fried in the skillet in ball or oval shapes.

The thing that really sets the BBQ apart one place to another (besides the skill of the pit cook) is the sauce. Southerners get pretty prideful about the best sauce and the makers do not share those secret recipes. Those sauces are the stuff of legends with some makers taking those secrets to the grave rather than to ever tell how they do it.

The base for the BBQ sauce in the south is vinegar. We do not put thick tomato based sauce on our meat as that is like putting catsup on your filet mignon. Basically you ruin the meat and insult the cook if you put any tomato stuff on the BBQ. If you must do that, then get take out and do not tell any southern soul.

The other ingredients are usually secrets of the cook, but you can tell that most use some hot pepper to give a nip. I love it hot, so I lean toward the spicy pork places. If you don’t like spicy, then you can leave off the sauce or just use a little. The more you drip on the hotter the taste, so I go heavy (which is one reason I much prefer a bun for a BBQ sandwich). But, if you don’t try the sauce, then you really missed the southern experience as the sauce is mightily important.

Around here, Lexington NC is the king of BBQ (and YES most BBQ cooks are men and not women). That is about a 45 minute drive. Here in my town, places will advertise as Lexington style BBQ to draw in crowds though some just build on the skill of the specific pit cook or the sauce like Richard’s of Salisbury. The Salisbury style barbecue includes a little ketchup in the vinegar sauce, and there's always a debate about that.

Only really good BBQ survives around here and in most of the south.

If you’ve never tried southern BBQ, then you are missing out on a food that has become an icon of the south. It cuts across all social lines—black/white, rich/poor, male/female, grown ups/kids.

Although you may not see this mass-produced across the country, that has nothing to do with the taste. The only reason BBQ has not mainstreamed is that it takes a long time to make and the meat cooking and sauce are arts.

BBQ just can’t be reproduced and packed in foil packs at the airport. But, maybe that is a good thing!

Check out this funny and educational video. You'll enjoy some Southern string music and learn more about Southern barbecue as the guys cover it state by state.

Holy Smoke - The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue

North Carolina Smoked Barbecue Shoulder

UNC Press has just come out with a great book about North Carolina barbecue. Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue
features how to cook barbecue as well as tracing the history of BBQ and includes information about famous que restaurants and pit masters from NC.

You can read more about Holy Smoke at my outdoor cooking web site - Yes You Can Grill.

I don't really excited about most books on barbecue. They usually just have recipes and try to improve on or add odd ingredients to classics. No. I really don't especially want to put mango on my chicken. I like that in my fruit salad. Thanks.

Holy Smoke really isn't a cookbook, although you do get a lot of inside secrets to making North Carolina barbecue and also directions for some sauces, slaws and even desserts like the famous Pig Pickin' Cake. It's more like walking back in time (and up through today) and getting to meet and talk to everyone who played a part in making barbecue big in the Tar Heel state.

You don't have to be from North Carolina to appreciate Holy Smoke. It's a fascinating story for anyone who enjoys barbecue in general or who likes great stories of people and places.

Holy Smoke would be a great book to give to anyone on your gift list who enjoys outdoor cooking or for family and friends from the South. It's also a fun read for general history buffs.