5 Ingredients or Fewer

Make one of these sauces in the hot skillet after you have cooked chicken breasts or pork chops.

Make one of these sauces in the hot skillet after you have cooked chicken breasts or pork chops.

Make one of these sauces in the hot skillet after you have cooked chicken breasts or pork chops.

Mojo is a name that originally branded several varieties of hot sauce from the Canary Islands. Now recipes and uses of mojo are spread throughout the tropical regions of northern South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The place of origin of a particular mojo recipe defines both its ingredients and its uses. Ingredients in mojo sauce can include olive oil, garlic, citrus juice (sour orange, lemon, lime), paprika, chili powder, oregano, and cumin. This flavorful sauce can be used on breads, potatoes, salads, and as a seasoning for meats and vegetables. This recipe was made as a condiment for whole roasted pig. The flavors are a complement to the sour-orange marinade used in Cuban Pig (page 163). The flavor emphasis in this recipe is placed on the acidity of the lime juice, the garlic, and oregano. Mixed with butter, this sauce can be turned into a great topper for sweet potatoes and bread.

In the South, you usually find pepper sauce in the middle of the dinner table beside the salt and black pepper. Don’t confuse this pepper sauce with a Tabasco-type sauce; this simple seasoning is made from vinegar and whole peppers. Over time the peppers will flavor the vinegar, and the longer it sits, the better it gets! Pepper sauce is used as a seasoning and an ornamental decoration. A few dashes will heighten the flavor of black-eyed peas, all types of greens, barbecue, and many other traditional Southern dishes. Pack your pepper sauce in glass containers of any size and shape. The aesthetic value of the glass combined with the color and variety of peppers creates a beautiful conversation piece.

The passion fruit is native to Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina. It is grown throughout the tropic and near-tropic regions around the world and the pulp, juice, and seeds are used in a variety of ways. The juice is highly concentrated and is used as an additive to other fruit juices. The juice and pulp are used to make pie filling and jellies. The seeds are often used as a topping for salads and other dishes that benefit from an acidic punch. Passion Fruit Butter Sauce was an inspiration I had when barbecuing in Jamaica. I enjoyed the way the passion fruit was used with seafood there, and I thought it would also complement the flavors of grilled chicken and pork. Use this as a dipping sauce, or better yet as a baste or as a finishing glaze.

Horseradish is a member of the mustard family, and grating or grinding this edible root releases the volatile oils that produce its signature bite. Mixing the ground horseradish with vinegar tames the spicy heat. German immigrants began growing horseradish in the Mississippi Basin in the late 1800s; today, six million gallons of prepared horseradish are produced there each year, which is 60 percent of the world’s supply. A traditional horseradish sauce is always a great partner with beef and can be as simple as a combination of whipping cream and prepared horseradish. As with any sauce based on whipping cream, the viscosity of the sauce is dependent on how much whipping you do. Here lemon juice and Dijon mustard add a bit of flair to the sauce, while mayonnaise adds a creaminess you can’t get from the cream alone.

In my years of cooking at barbecue competitions, I’ve noticed that judges’ barbecue taste preferences follow trends. In the 1990s, barbecue coated with semisweet tomato-based sauce or even a vinegar sop mop appealed to the average judge. As the years passed the consistent winners on the circuit were using a very sweet tomato-based sauce. These rich glazes started a new trend in competition, whereby most all competitors started sweetening their sauce. The following recipe is one of my favorite sauces, which I still use in competition as a sweet glaze for pork ribs. This glaze falls in line with the “sweet” trend but still delivers a flavor that doesn’t overpower the pork.

To barbecue aficionados it is clear that Big Bob Gibson was directly influenced by the conventions of Eastern North Carolina–style barbecue. The connection can’t be made through the family tree, but the ingredients in his vinegar-based sop make it obvious. The only difference is that Big Bob didn’t share North Carolinians’ affinity for apple cider vinegar, preferring distilled colored vinegar instead. This straightforward concoction has been mopped onto the restaurant’s pork shoulders since the very beginning. I am pleased to reveal that this four-ingredient “secret sauce” is Big Bob’s original recipe; maybe now the sauce bottles on the restaurant tables will stop disappearing.

Though the introduction of ribs to Big Bob Gibson’s menu was enthusiastically embraced by the locals, the recipe itself was, well, pretty bare-bones—simply a full-size sparerib seasoned with salt and pepper and slow-smoked. In 1979, Don McLemore offered a bonus to any employee who could improve on Big Bob’s ribs. During the next week the rib usage went up tenfold but profits took a nosedive, as the extremely well-fed pit workers experimented with different preparations. When the smoke cleared two weeks later, Steve Bullard earned a dime raise with this recipe.

In the Depression years, it was not uncommon to see little Sara Ruth Gibson haul a pillowcase loaded with fresh sliced apples onto the barn roof. Sara Ruth was the smallest and most agile of the Gibson children, so the job of drying apples was assigned to her. She would spread the pillowcase flat on the tin roof and spread the apples in a single layer inside her makeshift white tote bag. For five days she would put the apples out in the morning and fetch them at sundown, a ritual that could only mean one thing: Big Mama would be baking Apple Rolls with Vanilla Sauce that week. Dried apples make a great snack by themselves, or they can be stored and refreshed for use in cakes, pies, cobblers, and applesauce. Any type of apple can be dried as long as it is firm and not overripe. If a tin-roofed barn is not available at your home for drying, the oven can be used successfully.

Coleslaw is probably the side dish most often associated with barbecue, and its simple flavors match so well with smoked meat. The most common varieties include vinegar-based, mayonnaise-based, and mustard-based. Big Bob Gibson realized the harmonious relationship between slaw and barbecue early on. When he opened his first restaurant, vinegar slaw and Golden Flake potato chips were his only side-dish offerings, and a sweet tangy scoop of his coleslaw graced every barbecue sandwich that left the kitchen. As he told his customers, “If ya don’t like slaw, scrape it off!” Very little has changed in more than eighty years at the restaurant, including Big Bob’s original coleslaw recipe.