The Four Kingdoms of Barbecue, A Tour of America's Great Smoke Traditions

Ask any American exactly where to find the very best barbecue, and you had honestly better be ready for a passionate and quite possibly heated response. In a great deal of the country, barbecue is far more than simply a way of cooking meat over a fire. It is a genuinely deep source of regional pride, a treasured culinary tradition passed lovingly down through the generations, and the subject of friendly rivalries that can easily last a whole lifetime.

What curious outsiders so often fail to fully realize is that there is really no single American barbecue at all. Instead, the vast country is home to several quite distinct regional styles, each one with its own strongly preferred meats, its own signature sauces, and its own very firmly held opinions about the one right way to do things. In this piece, we set out on a tour of the four great kingdoms of American smoke.

A nation divided by smoke

At its very heart, true barbecue is defined above all by sheer patience. It is the ancient and honored art of cooking tougher cuts of meat low and slow over gently smoldering wood or glowing coals, very often for many long hours at a time. This gentle, fragrant, smoky heat gradually transforms even the humblest meat into something meltingly tender, quietly infused with a deep flavor that no quick grilling could ever really hope to match.

Beyond that one shared foundation, however, the various regions very quickly part ways with one another. The chosen cut of meat, the particular type of wood, the secret rubs and the prized sauces all vary quite dramatically from one part of the country to the next. These differences are certainly not trivial little details to the proud locals. They are the very heart of an identity, defended with the sort of fierce loyalty usually reserved for a favorite home sports team.

Texas and the reign of beef

In the vast and sprawling state of Texas, barbecue means one single thing above all others, and that one thing is unquestionably beef. Here the true undisputed king of it all is brisket, a large and famously stubborn cut that generously rewards only the very most patient of cooks. Smoked slowly for many long hours until it finally yields to the gentlest possible touch, a perfectly cooked brisket is the ultimate test of any Texas pitmaster's hard won skill.

The classic Texas approach is also especially notable for its quiet restraint. Rather than ever drowning the good meat in heavy sauce, the proud tradition places its faith almost entirely in a simple dry rub, one that is often little more than plain salt and plenty of coarse black pepper. The whole idea here is to let the sheer quality of the beef and the flavor of the smoke speak clearly for themselves, with any sauce at all offered strictly on the side.

The Carolinas and the pork divide

Travel a good way east to the two Carolinas and the entire picture suddenly changes once again. Here, the very word barbecue is practically synonymous with pork, most often served as wonderfully tender, slow pulled pork piled generously high inside a soft sandwich. Yet even within these two neighboring states, a great and rather delicious divide firmly exists over the single most important question of them all, the sauce.

In North Carolina, long tradition strongly favors a thin, tangy sauce built upon a simple base of sharp vinegar, bracing and bright with very little real sweetness to it at all. Just a little to the south, however, South Carolina proudly marches along to its own quite different beat, warmly embracing a distinctive golden colored sauce made instead with mustard. To carelessly confuse the two is to risk causing some genuine local offense.

Kansas City, the big tent

If some proud regions are defined mostly by their strict and unbending rules, then Kansas City is instead warmly celebrated for its welcoming variety. Often fondly described as the great big tent of all American barbecue, this generous style happily embraces a whole wide range of different meats, running from pork and beef all the way to chicken and well beyond. There is far less rigid dogma here and a great deal more room for delicious experimentation.

What truly ties absolutely everything together in Kansas City is the famous sauce, and what a glorious sauce it happens to be. Thick, deeply rich, and quite unabashedly sweet, it is built upon a hearty base of ripe tomato and then further enriched with dark molasses and brown sugar. This bold and sticky glaze has grown so widely beloved that, for a great many Americans, it is simply what barbecue sauce is always supposed to taste like.

Memphis and the mighty rib

Finally, we arrive at last in Memphis, a proud city where pork once again firmly takes center stage and the humble pork rib is treated by everyone as true royalty. The devoted pitmasters here have carefully perfected the whole delicate craft of cooking ribs, and they proudly offer up their smoky masterpiece in two quite distinct and equally cherished forms, known simply to all as wet and dry.

A wet rib is generously brushed all over with sauce as it slowly cooks, finally arriving at the table glistening and irresistibly sticky. A dry rib, by clear contrast, is thoroughly coated in a fragrant blend of spices and then served without any sauce at all, quietly letting the seasoning and the deep smoke do absolutely all of the talking. It is a truly fitting final stop on our tour, a good reminder that in America, even a single humble rib can happily spark a delicious debate.