Find Your Barbecue Style

Bill and Cheryl Jamison have eaten at countless barbecue joints to research their cookbooks. Here, they've shared some of their favorite styles of 'cue. Try the following recipes, adapted for home cooks, for authentic regional barbecue flavor.

It's all about the sauce in Kansas City. Pitmasters specialize without prejudice in brisket, spareribs, and even chicken and sausage. What doesn't vary is the style of the tomato-based, sweet, and sticky sauce, long established as America's favorite barbecue topping. (KC Masterpiece is a popular commercial version.)

As the center of Southern barbecue, Memphis offers a style of sauce somewhere between the thin, tangy Carolina version and the sweet, thick variety typical of Kansas City.

If you've never eaten slaw on, rather than with, a sandwich, you're in for a treat. Locals enjoy premier pork sandwiches topped with a mustard-laced slaw.

Pulled pork shoulder is the signature BBQ style in Lexington. Slow, low-heat cooking is key to tender pork that shreds easily. While the pork is still warm, shred it into uneven shards, mixing together some of the crisp, dark outer meat with the moister interior meat. Combine the classic Piedmont sauce–a thin, vinegar-based mixture–with the meat for a tangy kick, or mix it with shredded cabbage for Lexington coleslaw.

In Texas, barbecue is about the beef–if there's any sauce, it's a thin, spicy pan sauce made from the meat drippings. In all of the area's barbecue bastions, pitmasters smoke hefty hunks of beef, usually brisket, for up to a full day.

Santa Maria beef barbecue calls for tri-tip steak, a cut of beef also known as bottom sirloin or sirloin tip. The pros cook their meat over specially-crafted pits, often with a crank and pulley controlling the temperature by raising and lowering the grate over a red oak log fire. The sirloin's ready to enjoy much more quickly than brisket or pork shoulder, and generally served rare to medium instead of well done. The customary topping is a mild green-chile-and-tomato-salsa.

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