a sauceBone Suckin' Sauce
also: Bone Suckin' Sweet Southern · Ford's Foods sauce
Bone Suckin', with the g dropped on the label.
A Raleigh line of bottled sauces, of which the one that built the brand is Sweet Southern: cane sugar first, tomato puree second, water third, apple cider vinegar fourth, at six grams of sugar to the tablespoon. The house also bottles an Eastern Vinegar sauce, whose label puts apple cider vinegar and distilled vinegar first and tomato paste sixth, and a mustard whose seven ingredients name no tomato at all. One maker, three readings of the same state's shelf.
The story Cited · web-bonesuckin-eastern-nc-page
The company dates the sauce to Raleigh in 1992 and calls the recipe a family one; the Sweet Southern page describes that bottle as the flavor the brand launched with. The mustard's page quotes Mr. Ford, of Ford's Foods, on making a sweet version of the house's sweet-and-spicy mustard without the heat.
The interesting part is on the backs of the bottles. Sweet Southern reads sugar, tomato, water, vinegar — the order of a Kansas City sauce, made in the eastern half of North Carolina, where the sauce a pit puts on a chopped hog has neither sugar nor tomato in it. The Eastern Vinegar bottle, sold alongside it, inverts that: two vinegars, then water, then cane sugar, with tomato paste down at six. The maker's own page for that bottle describes the tomato and molasses in it as a light hint behind the vinegar. Inference — a house that sells both is not choosing between the styles; it is selling the distance between them as two products.
Facts
| base | heavy-tomato |
|---|---|
| styles | Eastern North Carolina barbecue |
| region | Eastern North Carolina, North Carolina |
| links | Bone Suckin' Sauce — Sweet Southern, 18 oz · Bone Suckin' Sauce — Eastern Vinegar BBQ Sauce, 17 oz |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
On the label
| what was read | bottle · Ford's Foods, Raleigh, NC |
|---|---|
| vinegar | #4 on the label |
| tomato | #2 on the label |
| mustard | #7 on the label |
| sugar | #1 on the label |
| sugar per tablespoon | 6 g (a tablespoon of table sugar is about 12.6 g) |
| sodium per tablespoon | 105 mg |
| the label, in order | Cane Sugar, Tomato Puree (Tomato Paste, Water), Water, Apple Cider Vinegar, Vegan Worcestershire Sauce (Water, Distilled Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Molasses, Caramel Color, Tamarind, Onion and Garlic), Salt, Organic Yellow Mustard (Organic Distilled Vinegar, Organic Mustard Seed, Salt, Organic Turmeric, Organic Spices), Horseradish, Lemon Juice, Molasses, Dried Onion, Xanthan Gum, Spice, Natural Smoke, Dried Garlic |
Read from this page, 2026-09-16. The Sweet Southern bottle, 18 oz. Ingredients from the maker's page, revision code 26-1; sugar and sodium from USDA FoodData Central record 1862954, which carries the same list. The house's Eastern Vinegar and mustard bottles are separate rows in data/harvest/sauces.json, with ingredients and no panel figures. Every bottle we have read is on the sauce page.
Recipes you may use
Public-domain cookbooks are printed here in full, spelling and all. Where a recipe is still in copyright, the page gives the ingredients — a list of what goes in is a fact — and links to the rest.
Barbecue Sauce (Kansas City-style)
- 1 cup (235 mL) ketchup
- 6 tablespoons (90 mL) Worcestershire sauce
- 4 tablespoons (60 mL) butter or margarine
- 3 tablespoons (45 mL) white vinegar
- 1 tablespoon (15 mL) plain prepared mustard
- 3 tablespoons (45 mL) finely minced yellow onion
- 4 teaspoons (20 mL) bottled liquid smoke flavor (hickory)
- ¼ teaspoon (1 mL) Louisiana-style red pepper sauce
- ½ cup (120 mL) brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon (15 mL) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt
Makes 8 servings.
A sugar-first tomato sauce of the same shape, freely licensed. The maker's own formula is not published; these are free-to-use recipes of the same family, for a cook who wants to make a jar.
Barbecue Sauce I
- ¼ cup (62.5 mL) brown sugar
- 1 tbsp (15 mL) garlic powder
- 1 tbsp (15 mL) paprika powder
- 2 tsp (10 mL) salt
- 1 heaping tsp (6.66 mL) of ground coffee beans
- 1 cup (250 mL) ketchup
- ½ cup (125 mL) water
- 3 tbsp (45 mL) white vinegar
- A shot of whiskey or ½ shot of cognac
- A squeeze of lemon juice
Sauce for Barbecues (receipt 335)
The Southern mop of 1867 that pre-dates any tomato in a barbecue bottle.
Its kin
Sources
- Bone Suckin' Sauce Sweet Southern, 18 oz — product page · link
- Bone Suckin' Sauce Eastern Vinegar BBQ Sauce, 17 oz — product page · link
- Bone Suckin' Mustard, 12 oz — product page · link
- Eastern North Carolina Vinegar BBQ Sauce — Where American Barbecue Began · link
- FoodData Central, Branded Foods · link
- Bottled Carolina barbecue sauce labels, 68 rows · link
- Cookbook:Barbecue Sauce (Kansas City-style) — Wikibooks Cookbook · link
- Cookbook:Barbecue Sauce I — Wikibooks Cookbook · link
- Mrs. Hill's New Cook-Book; or, Housekeeping Made Easy. A Practical System for Private Families, in Town and Country, Especially Adapted to the Southern States — Mrs. A. P. Hill (Annabella P. Hill), of Georgia, 1867 · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.