"Sometimes I eat ribs nekkid, but if company's coming, I usually put on pants." Meathead

The old saw is that the secret to great barbecue is the sauce. Not so.

The sauce is just part of the picture. But there's no doubt that a good sauce can really make the meat taste better. And it can cover up your mistakes.

Below are the 12 classic barbecue sauces (if we stretch the definition of "sauce" to include Memphis dry rubs). Click the links for my recipes if you want to make your own. All barbecue cooks should have their own signature sauce!

1) Kansas City. By far the most popular style, this is the classic rich, sweet-tart, tomato-based sauce often sweetened with molasses or brown sugar and balanced with vinegar. Many have liquid smoke to help get that outdoor flavor for folks who cannot cook outdoors. But beware: Most commercial sauces labeled Kansas City sauce are waaaaaay too sweet. If you pick up a bottle in the grocery labeled Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce", and sugar or high fructose syrup are the first ingredients on the label, put it down. KC sauces don't penetrate the meat well, and sit on top like frosting. They caramelize beautifully over a hot fire.

2) South Carolina Mustard Sauce. Nowhere are there more regional sauces than South Carolina. In the eastern part of the state, on the North Carolina border, there is a vinegar and pepper sauce that is similar to the East Carolina mop-sauce. There is a tomato laced vinegar sauce from the northern hill country similar to the Lexington and Hill Country sauce from North Carolina. And there is a ketchup based sauce similar to Kansas City sauce. But the most distinctive, and by far my fave, is the mustard based sauce. Mustard and pork go together like peanut butter and jelly. Early German immigrants in South Carolina knew this. The classic SC mustard sauces found in barbecue joints from Columbia to Charleston are mostly runny yellow mustard, vinegar, sugar, and spices. Simple but very effective. The names of many of the best barbecue joints that serve mustard sauce have German names: Shealy, Sweatman, Meyer, and Zeigler. They are especially good on pulled pork. I offer two versions, the one linked to the top of this paragraph is the classic while my Grown-up Mustard Sauce is a more complex, herbal variation on the theme. Around the rest of the state it is common to find sauces similar to North Carolina.

3) East Carolina Vinegar Mop-Sauce. On the coast of North and South Carolina, a.k.a. the "East Carolina" or the "Low Country", the philosophy is: "Keep the mustard for your hot dogs and the ketchup for your fries." The African slaves of the Scottish settlers in the region pioneered American barbecue and their simple sauces were plain a kiss of hot pepper flakes and ground black pepper in vinegar. And so they remain today where the sauce is used both as a mop, or baste, on the meat while it is cooking, and then as a finishing sauce at tableside. Thin and piquant, they are designed to penetrate the meat, not just sit on top as thicker ketchup and mustard sauces often do. They do a great job of cutting the fat in lipid-laced pork, important in a state where barbecue means chopped pork, not ribs. There is little or no sugar in the mix, so your kids will hate it. Taste it on just a bit of your chopped pork before your pour it over the whole sandwich, and if don't like it, send the leftovers to me. My Kiss & Vinegar East Carolina Mop-Sauce is simple and classic.

4) Lexington Dip (a.k.a. Western Carolina or Piedmont Dip). In Lexington and in the "Piedmont" hilly areas of western North Carolina they often call their mop-sauce "dip". It is vinegar and pepper based, a lot like the East Carolina mop-Sauce, but laced with a hint of tomato sauce or ketchup. The hill country of South Carolina serves similar sauces. The red stuff helps tame the fierceness of the vinegar a bit, and the hint of sweetness conterbalances the acidity. I prefer it slightly to the East Carolina style.

5) Texas Sauce. There are three important culinary influences on Texas barbecue: (1) European immigrants who brought expertise in smoking meats, especially Germans, Czechs, and Hungarians (2) freed slaves from the Southeast, and (3) Mexicans (Texas was, after all, a part of Mexico, and its cuisine leans heavily on Spanish, Mayan, and Aztec cultures). Most Texas sauces are fashioned to complement beef brisket first and they are not very sweet. Some traditional Texas pitmasters use their sauce as both a mop to cool and moisten the meat during direct cooking, and as an optional finishing sauce for everything, including sausage, mutton, pork ribs, and chicken. Most common are thin, tart mops that are flavored with vinegar, chili powder or ancho powder, lots of black pepper, cumin, hot sauce, fresh onion, and only a touch of ketchup. They are rarely as thick and sweet as Kansas City sauces and often resemble a thin tomato soup with a beef stock base. They penetrate the meat easily rather than sit on top. I prefer them on brisket, not pork. Some of the best sauces have beef drippings, and therefore cannot be bottled. In this picture, the bottled sauce sold at one of the best joints in Texas, Cooper's in Llano, is poured into a large pot and is kept warm on the holding pit. Trimmings are tossed in the pot, and when you order, if you ask for sauce, the meat is dipped in the pot. It tastes a LOT different than the bottled sauce served on the tables. Texas rubs are formulated for brisket so they have little or no sugar, lots of black pepper, and so they are very different from Memphis and most other rubs.

6) Tennessee Whiskey Sauce. The Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue is considered by many to be the most prestigious competition in the world. As do many competitions, they have a sauce category, but theirs has a twist: Jack Daniels must be in the blend. Well, just as they planned it, whiskey-laced sauces have spread across the nation. There are so many that I consider it to be a legitimate category of barbecue sauce. My recipe for Tennessee Hollerin' Whiskey Sauce is named after the hollow, a lowland by the creek in which it was invented, this rich sauce has a kick, and when you taste it you'll bend over and holler "Kick me!" The secret: Whiskey concentrate.

7) Louisiana Hot Dippin Sauce. Fiery foods are, forgive me, are hot right now. A few years ago nobody north of Texas had heard of chipotle. Now it's on everyone's spice rack and there's even a restaurant chain named after the smoked jalapeno. The first bottled hot sauces came out of Louisiana, home of Tabasco Sauce. Not surprisingly, there are lots of great hot and spicy barbecue sauces on the market. Some just burn from capsaicin (the active ingredient in chili peppers), but the best are blends of several different kinds of heat, among them: Black pepper, white pepper, mustard, wasabi, several different kinds of chilis, plus an underlying flavor of the meat of the chili pepper. The heat is then usually tempered with tomato sauce, and often countered with sweetness. Bayou Bite, my version of a Louisiana barbecue sauce is a wonderful blend of sweet and hot peppers used as a finishing sauce, after the meat is cooked, or as a dippin sauce served with the meat. Even if you don't like hot stuff, you really should try this one.

8) Alabama White Sauce. Developed for chicken by Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama, this mayonnaise and vinegar sauce has become so well known among barbecue fans that it has generated many admirers and a handful of imitators. I don't recommend it for ribs, and not everyone likes it on chicken, but it is so popular in Alabama it must be consider a regional classic.

9) Memphis Dry Rub. Memphis is second only to Kansas City as a town of barbecue renown, but alas, there is no distinctive indigineous Memphis sauce style. That's because many purists prefer their ribs "dry" with only a spice rub. A restaurant's gotta have confidence in its meat to serve it with spices only and no sauce. Many Memphis restaurants have bowed to public demand and now offer a choice: Dry or wet, with wet usually meaning a Kansas City-style tomato-based sauce perhaps a bit thinner, more vinegary. Memphis dry rubs are usually paprika based, and typical ingredients are salt, garlic, onion, black pepper, chili powder, and oregano. Perhaps the most revered dry ribs are served at Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous (called "The Vous" by the locals). There are a lot of recipes on the internet that the owners have palmed off on gullible media. They aren't close. I've reversed engineered Rendezvous-style Memphis Dry Ribs, and my recipe is a LOT closer to the real deal. Follow the link and I'll also tell you how to cook ribs like The Vous. And it's not low and slow!

10) Fruit sauce. There are a number of wonderful sauces made with fruits, jams, and jellies as sweeteners. They often are your basic tomato based barbecue sauce with jams as sweeteners. Raspberry, cherry, and apple are common. The best work great with ribs. Eve's KC Pig Paint is a rich, sweet, Kansas City-style tomato-based sauce, with a secret ingredient from the Garden of Eden.