Name: Basic Vinegar Barbecue Moppin’ Sauce
Ingredients: white vinegar; cider vinegar; butter; sugar; red pepper flakes; salt; dry mustard; worcestershire sauce; tabasco sauce

James Villas

Basic Vinegar Barbecue Moppin’ Sauce

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy
Makes about
3 cups

Appears in

The Glory of Southern Cooking

By James Villas

Published 2007

About
Recipes
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Use this all-purpose sauce to baste, mix into, and serve with any form of chopped, shredded, or pulled barbecued pork. It’s the style of sauce you’re likely to find at a typical North Carolina pig pickin’. In a tightly sealed jar, the sauce keeps up to 2 months in the refrigerator.

Ingredients

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup cider vinegar
4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco sauce to taste

Americas
United States
Sauce
Gluten-free

Method

In a stainless-steel or enameled saucepan, combine all the ingredients over low heat and simmer, stirring. Cook, stirring, for about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Avery Island in western Louisiana is actually a gigantic hill on a swampy base of pure salt, and it is here that generations of the McIlhenny family have been producing Tabasco Sauce since shortly before the War Between the States. Originally grown by Edmund McIlhenny from seeds given him by a Mexican friend, the small red pepper plants that flourish here were the only survivors when the island was flooded by Union troops in 1863. Two years later, McIlhenny decided to grind and blend some of the peppers with the island’s salt, let the mash ferment, then add vinegar to make a zesty sauce. The basic formula has never changed, but today the mash is fermented and aged for years in special white oak barrels before being blended with premium distilled vinegar and periodically stirred for a month with wooden paddles. When the pepper skins and seeds are filtered out, the result is the unique sauce known worldwide as Tabasco. Many, many other hot sauces are produced around the South, but none has the subtle mysteries of Tabasco. Do keep Tabasco in the refrigerator; if it turns reddish brown, it’s lost its flavor and zing and needs to be replaced.

Preparation info

Difficulty

Makes about

Appears in

Ingredients

Method