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- Top 5 Reasons to Go
- Taking Your 'Cue
Want a guaranteed one-word conversation starter in any gathering of North Carolinians? Say "barbecue." John Shelton Reed, a Southerner, a sociologist, and a former director of the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has called barbecue "the most southern meal of all." But just as there are a myriad of southern accents, there are many types of barbecue. Understanding the distinctions is key to understanding a culinary and cultural phenomenon in North Carolina, where barbecue begins with pork (banish all thoughts of beef) and is not so much a verb as a noun (that is, a dish or an event known as a pig-pickin').
The state's barbecue tradition, variously linked to the cooking techniques of Native Americans, African slaves, and Scottish-Irish settlers, has been immortalized in song, prose, poetry, and the electronic media. So revered is the moist and tangy meat that it has inspired place names such as Barbecue Presbyterian Church, which rises beside Barbecue Creek in the Piedmont's Harnett County. Everyone from firefighters to high school bands offer barbecue at fund-raisers, and it's often featured at receptions and reunions of all sorts. Versions of it are served in eateries ranging from top-drawer to lunch counter, though many argue the most authentic barbecue is found in small-town cinder-block restaurants with on-site smokehouses.
And right there is the, ah, meat of the matter: taste. The method of cooking the meat and the ingredients of the sauce that coats it spark a passion that cuts across lines of age, class, and race. One hundred years or more of tradition have dictated that either whole hogs or shoulders be slow-roasted over a wood or charcoal fire to imbue the meat with an appropriate smoky flavor. Over the past few decades, however, an increasing number of barbecuers have switched to cleaner propane flames.
The real fault line, though, is geography. In eastern North Carolina (that's east of Interstate 95), the entire hog is cooked and the meat is "pulled" (off the bone) or coarsely chopped and then heavily seasoned with a vinegar-and-pepper-based sauce. This concoction, whose exact ingredients are jealously guarded by each owner, has a definite kick. West of Interstate 85, the meat, which usually includes just the pork shoulders, can be sliced or chopped. It's then mixed with a somewhat sweeter sauce made of vinegar, ketchup, brown sugar, and perhaps Worcestershire sauce. Serving as a buffer between these two regions is the Research Triangle area, where you'll find both types of barbecue.
No matter where North Carolinians stand on the barbecue debate, both sides agree that the line of good taste has to be drawn somewhere. In this case, it's at the mustardy sauce used in the state just south of the border.
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