It's May, which means we're getting into peak barbecue season—and that means barbecue competitions galore, especially in the South.
In Memphis, that means it's time for the annual World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. And for those traveling to that special event, the Transportation Security Administration has a special reminder for you:
"Leave your barbecue sauce in your checked baggage" is good advice. Here's some even better advice: Toss your barbecue sauce in the trash bin before you go into the airport at all.
Okay, okay, okay:
Here's the thing about barbecue sauce: It's not that good, at least in the context of legitimate barbecue.
Is it sweet, sticky, and tasty?
Sure, it's all of those things. It makes a great dipping sauce for chicken tenders, maybe a nice component to a good burger sauce.
You could even use it as a base for a wacky pizza, if you've a mind for it.
But it's not meant for good barbecue. Why?
Simply: Good barbecue is a celebration of good meat, and barbecue sauce gets in the way of that.
If you're going to go through all the trouble of cooking barbecue—the hours of patient smoking, tending fire, checking temperatures, what have you—you want to get a good high-quality piece of meat for that. And the last thing you want to do after all that work is dump a bottle of overpowering condiment on it.
If you do barbecue right, the meat will speak for itself:
At most, a piece of well-barbecued (non-chicken) meat could call for a light-to-moderate dressing of a vinegar-based sauce, something to underscore the rich smoked flavor rather than obscure it.
The only application of barbecue sauce that could be considered acceptable is on pork ribs, where a thicker sauce is applied as a thin layer that more constitutes a glaze than a slather, something meant to caramelize for twenty or thirty minutes just before it's pulled off the pit.
Now go and get barbecuing—without the sauce. And let's be sure to thank the TSA for shining light on this important and pressing issue!
[Editor's Note: This story is the opinion of one particular employee who probably also likes pineapple on pizza. May God have mercy on his soul.]
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