If your goal in life is to sample every style of barbecue in America, you don't have to travel across the country to do it. Just visit South Carolina, the only state in the nation where you'll find all four of the basic types of barbecue sauce, sometimes on the same menu.
It's the sauce that determines what kind of barbecue you're eating in the Palmetto State. When we say "barbecue" around here, we're always talking about pork. Beef, chicken and other critters can be barbecued, grilled or cooked with or without sauce, but only pork—most often pulled pork cooked in a smoky pit—is barbecue.
South Carolina is home to four barbecue sauces: mustard, vinegar-and-pepper, light tomato and heavy tomato. The sauces are sometimes mopped on during the cooking process or can be served on the side, a subject of much debate among barbecue pit masters.
Some people think of mustard-style barbecue as South Carolina's unofficial sauce because this is the only place you'll find it. It's most popular in the middle of the state, where German families settled in the 1700s. Those German immigrants brought their love of mustard to the region, and it soon combined with the love of pork for a lovely, tangy result.
