15-Minute South Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce

South Carolina BBQ sauce is a mustard-based barbecue sauce made with brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and honey. It's a little sweet, a little tangy, with just a bit of a kick. It's also just extremely, extremely good and so easy to make.

Of course homemade South Carolina barbecue sauce is great for grilling and smoking. But I also use it as a sauce on my BBQ pulled pork pizza, drizzle it over leftover sous vide carnitas for tacos, and even use it as a glaze on juicy, tender turkey burgers. Sometimes I even squeeze it onto tortilla chips as a treat, just because I can.

My husband Jimmy loves South Carolina barbecue sauce and has been making it himself for several years, ever since we visited his sister and her husband in South Carolina. He even bottles it and gives it as a gift around the holidays.

So I asked him if I could add his take on this barbecue sauce recipe to my collection of condiments and dip recipes to share with you, and lucky for you, he said yes!

About South Carolina BBQ Sauce

If you're like me, for most of your life you may have assumed that there was just one BBQ sauce (I grew up in Pennsylvania, we're not known for our barbecue, don’t judge me).

But when my sister-in-law fell in love with a guy from South Carolina, he introduced us to South Carolina’s unique mustard-based barbecue sauce. (Jimmy likes to say it was in that moment that he knew his sister had made the right choice of life partner.)

South Carolina's BBQ sauce has a perfect balance of tanginess and sweetness, with a zing of acidity that pairs well with the natural flavors of meats cooked low and slow until tender. Which, if you ask Jimmy, is one of the best ways to cook meat.

South Carolina BBQ sauce is a staple of low-country cooking. It's great on pulled pork sandwiches and even more amazing on oven-baked ribs. You can even use this sauce in place of the applesauce glaze on my applesauce-glazed oven ribs recipe.

What makes South Carolina's BBQ sauce different from other regional barbecue sauces? First, bear with me for a quick history lesson. Though barbecue might seem like a quintessentially "American" style of food, its origins are, like many things, complicated by the United States' ugly history of colonialism and slavery. Barbecue, as a cooking style, most likely originated in the Caribbean.

But once this low-and-slow style of cooking made it to the United States, it became so popular that George Washington frequently wrote about how much he loved attending barbecues, and the 13 colonies even celebrated the end of the Revolutionary War with barbecue parties.

As the practice of barbecue-style cooking spread throughout the colonies and expanding territories, the accompanying sauce also evolved, picking up regional flavors as different cultures and populations added their own unique twists.

Texas BBQ sauce often uses chili powders and spices common to southwestern and Mexican cuisine. Florida's BBQ sauces often have citrus flavors more common to Cuban food. Maryland's BBQ sauce is full of horseradish because, as Jimmy says, the originally Catholic colony apparently just enjoyed the experience of pain (for legal reasons, this is a joke).

And back then, South Carolina had a large German population. And what do Germans love? A strict upholding of established rules and procedures... and, you guessed it, mustard. Hence the mustard-y glory of South Carolina barbecue sauces.

 If you’re the type of person who doesn’t like mustard and is about to stop reading, Jimmy wants you to know that he doesn't like mustard either and that you should definitely keep reading because this sauce is definitely worth it.

It's hard to find South Carolina BBQ sauces in grocery stores here in Boston, so that's why he began making his own, tailored to fit his own tastes. The sweetness from the honey and brown sugar softens the bitter sharpness of the two different mustards, there's a little heat from smoked paprika and hot sauce, and the apple cider vinegar brings a nice fruity acidity.

"[This South Carolina BBQ sauce] is my way of taking something I don't like — mustard — and turning it into something that I really, really, really do. It's an amazing flavor balancing act that will make you devour everything it touches."

— Jimmy

Ingredient Notes

Here are the ingredients you'll need to make this mustard-based South Carolina barbecue sauce! It's a lot of ingredients, but a lot of them are pantry staples (I think so, anyway) so you shouldn't need to buy too many things specifically to make this!

• Whole Grain Dijon Mustard and Yellow Mustard - Whole grain Dijon mustard has whole or crushed mustard seeds in it with a slightly sharp, tangy mustard taste with a nice bit of texture from the seeds. I usually use the Old Style Whole Grain by Maille or a Grey Poupon Country Dijon variety. Yellow mustard brings that classic mustard flavor and bright yellow color without the kind of heat that will blow out your sinuses.
• Ketchup - The tomato and vinegar in ketchup adds a nice bit of umami to this barbecue sauce. It also blends with the yellow from the mustard to give South Carolina BBQ sauce its yellow-orange color.
• Honey - For sweetness! I like using a high quality honey with a strong flavor, but any honey you like is fine.
• Apple Cider Vinegar - There's already some vinegar in the mustards and ketchup, but apple cider brings a nice fruity vinegar flavor to the party.
• Worcestershire Sauce - The sweet and sour flavor of Worcestershire sauce is another way of adding umami to this sauce. You can also use Marmite if you've got it on hand. By the way, if you're vegan or gluten-free, they do make vegan and gluten-free Worcestershire sauces.
• Brown Sugar - For sweetness! Brown sugar has molasses in it which adds some nice caramel-y notes to balance out the warmth and tanginess from all the other ingredients.
• Hot Sauce - Technically optional, but this adds a nice bit of heat to your South Carolina BBQ sauce. Any hot sauce you like is fine. I use my homemade fresh pepper hot sauce, or a mild sauce like Cholula.
• Spices - Garlic Powder, Smoked Paprika, Red Chile Pepper or Cayenne, Onion Powder, Seasoned Salt, and Black Pepper.

Instructions

Making this barbecue sauce could not be easier. Truly. Let's get into it.

Remove from the heat and pour into a heat-safe jar or container. Give it a good shake or whisk in the jar if there are any lumps from where you scraped the pot clean.

That's it! Really! You can enjoy this South Carolina barbecue sauce immediately, or let it cool to room temp, then place it in the fridge to cool completely before using it. The flavor and consistency will change as the barbecue sauce cools. Giving it time to sit will allow the flavors to mellow out and the texture to thicken up.

Practical Tips & Recipe Notes

• This will have a bit of a spicy kick to it on the first day you make it, especially if you add the hot sauce and red pepper powder or cayenne. Letting the barbecue sauce chill in the fridge overnight gives the flavors time to mellow and settle down slightly. If you don't have time to chill it overnight, you can use an ice bath to drop the temperature quickly.
• There are a lot of kinds of dijon mustard out there, but this works best with one that has some sort of visible mustard seeds in it. It's up to you if you want to go with a whole grain or coarse ground variety.
• If you're storing your BBQ sauce in a squeeze bottle, you may need to snip the tip of the bottle big enough that the mustard seeds can fit through.

📖 Recipe