When someone mentions barbecue images comes to the mind like cooking at the backyard grill, a social gathering, cooking outdoors and cooking meat slowly over wood and smoke that adds flavor to the food.
Different cooks have different preferences and style in their cooking. Some prefer rubbing the seasoning whether wet or dry prior to cooking and some prefers to soak the meat first in special marinades that could be sops, mops and finishing. The preparation and ingredients for marinating may differ from region to region the preferred wood to be used can also differ. However, no perfect barbecue will taste as good without the perfect barbecue sauce.
Barbecue sauces can generally be categorized by what they are based on. Common examples are tomato, vinegar and mustard based sauces. To give the barbecue its distinctive taste and prevent the meat from burning easily, barbecue sauces are applied to the meat while being cooked with the exemption of tomato based barbecue sauces as tomato based sauces burns easier than the other kinds of sauces.
Barbecue sauce preparation can either be sweet, sour, tangy, spicy, hot, thick or thin. The varieties are almost endless...