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The REAL Eastern NC Sauce!

It's imperative that you use apple cider vinegar only. Combine vinegar (1 qt.), brown sugar to desired sweetness, you cannot use too much, a tablespoon of mustard, tablespoon of ketchup, for color only, texas pete hot sauce to taste, worchester sauce, crushed red pepper, black pepper, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and I like to add honey. Put all in a pot and heat until everything blends together, let cool and sit for about a month before putting it on you chopped NC pork BBQ!

All of these sauce recipes are way, way off base. Eastern NC born and raised right here. I've been eating eastern NC chopped barbeque since I was old enough to eat meat!!!! Growing up my dad was the cook at every pig pickin' and has always made his own eastern NC barbecue sauce. I'm currently employed at an eastern NC BBQ restaurant!!! Boss Hog's Backyard BBQ in Washington and Greenville, North Carolina if anyone is ever out in our neck of the woods, feel free to come have a taste of real eastern NC chopped BBQ! Grilled chicken and ribs are also amazing (with a thicker, sweeter rib-appropriate sauce if you want it) and both the barbecue and rib sauce are both homemade from a special recipe. If anyone knows their eastern NC barbecue sauce, it's me. It practically runs through my veins. So believe me when I say that NONE of these recipes posted here are even REMOTELY close. Anyone who makes these sauces MIGHT very well enjoy them, but you are NOT eating eastern NC chopped barbecue, kiddos! Trust me!

And as for the tomato dispute, Lexington-style barbecue sauce is a thick, heavily tomato-based sauce that 90% of the population of eastern NC will agree is disgusting. On a less biased note, it's EXTREMELY different from eastern NC barbecue sauce. BUT to dispute a few previously made comments, eastern-NC-style barbecue sauce absolutely DOES contain some tomato. Ketchup, of all things, actually. Not a lot. It's a very, very runny practically watery sauce, and the list of ingredients has several (very important!) ingredients that none of these recipes listed here seem to cover. Sugar, hot sauce and a few other things being among the forgotten ingredients.

Sadly, I'm not willing to part with the recipe. As a true eastern North Carolinian, I'd just invite all of y'all over for a pig pickin' but alas, no can do.

Best of luck finding that true eastern NC barbecue experience. Just a heads up, you aren't going to find real eastern NC barbecue anywhere west of Raleigh (and that landmark is a generous one.) If you want real eastern NC barbecue, come to the coast!

Multi grain bread! This looks like a great cookbook!!!

The egg dish on the tasting menu right now is insane.

I don't know if one would consider this food, but I remember having snow blocks drizzled with warm maple syrup. Yum!

I used to love when my mom made me macaroni and hot dogs for lunch! :)

My fondest childhood food memory is eating hot pot with my family.

My fondest memory is all the delicious pies and cakes my mom used to cook at Christmas. She baked coconut cakes, banana cakes, apple cakes, black walnut cakes, etc. garrettsambo@aol.com

My Dad dancing around the kitchen with the annual (raw) Thanksgiving Turkey, doing his "Super Turkey!" impersonation.

EVERYTHING MY MOM COOKED OR BAKED TURNED OUT YUMMY:) SHE IS 83 AND STILL BAKES GREAT COBBLERS:)

My aunt would make hamburger soup and homemade buttermilk biscuits. I love the smell of the biscuit dough and loved to eat it raw, it was so tangy!

My grandma's homemade indian fry bread!

Baking with my grandmother.