Welcome to JayPo’s Penalty Boxed Lunch, where we explore food from around the country! This week’s 17th official entry comes to us from Alabama who is known for two things, ‘Bama football and white barbeque sauce…or so I thought?
Food History!
According to OnlyInYourState.com, the infamous Alabama White BBQ Sauce–or just white sauce when you are in AL–was invented in 1925 by the infamous BBQ master, Big Bob Gibson. It is traditionally a topping on a smoked/pulled chicken and it is a combination of: mayo, vinegar, black pepper, salt, sugar, lemon juice, horseradish, and cayenne pepper.
How I Made It!
I didn’t smoke the chicken; maybe that was my first mistake in an authentic experience. However, I roasted a whole chicken with my favorite BBQ rub and pulled it. I topped it with the white sauce recipe listed above, homemade pickled peppers and put it all on a toasted potato roll. I loved everything about this sandwich and I’m upset I haven’t made it since in the last two years.
What Does A Local Think?
(Thanks to Ben from https://www.rollbamaroll.com/)
Do you think the Pulled Chicken w/ White BBQ Sauce represents your state accurately?
Nope. I’m told it’s good. Bob Gibson has made a fortune out of his not expected Bar B-Q sauce and it is great, according to people that aren’t me because I’ve never been and have plans in place to make sure I never will. It’s a white sauce, based on mayonnaise, and my fingers are blistered typing about the evils of that egg and oil-based condiment.I think what has happened is that writers do a Bar B-Q from state to state compilation and they trip over themselves when they get to Alabama because they have to write about vinegar and tomato sauces from Georgia and they have to write about tomato and vinegar based sauces from South Carolina and they have to write about that penicillin shot they got in Mississippi and really don’t want to go into detail about a sad but needful night in Hattiesburg so they lean on an oddity. Alabama white sauce is the tomato and vinegar bored writer’s panacea. It’s iconic because it’s a local thing, but it’s a local thing that remains local to its originators. There are a few imitators that offer a facsimile, but if you order a Bar B-Q sandwich in Alabama you get pulled pork with a tomato and vinegar sauce and we go heavy on the black pepper. Dill pickle slices are mandatory.
How do you make your sandwich?
We simmer a pork butt in lime and pineapple or smoke it with nothing more than salt and pepper. The rest is trust. I have a buddy that owns a Bar B-Q place and his sauces rule the Earth as we know it, so I’ve stopped making my own sauces. His beats mine with a wooden spoon drenched in the blood of the person that previously thought his wooden spoon was better. We do pull the slow cooked pork and then char the pulled meat under a broiler. I know this may seem odd to the rest of the world, but pork needs pickles and buns need toasting. It’s our way.
Where do you order your favorite Pulled Chicken w/ White BBQ Sauce?
I don’t. There’s this really cool place a kid’s ten-minute bike ride from my house owned in part by the American Idol winner Taylor Hicks (and he’s a nice guy by the way.) They offer a white sauce chicken sandwich but I always substitute red sauce. They have another white sauce, but it’s a blue cheese sauce served over tea smoked wings and it’s totally different. In any tally of who does what with Bar B-Q we are going to be the white sauce state because we stand alone, but we really don’t do that that often. It’s like saying Sally has the best silver setting. It may be true, but it comes out once a year at Thanksgiving. It’s pork, red sauce, and pickles with an Oxford comma. Pull up a seat… unless you’re a Tennessee fan. Those guys can go fuck themselves.
