Carolina Barbecue

a sauceSam Jones BBQ sauce

also: Sam Jones Sweet BBQ Sauce · Sam Jones Vinegar

The sauce from the Ayden family's Winterville restaurant.

A bottled line from the whole-hog house Sam Jones opened at Winterville in 2015, third generation of the Skylight Inn family at Ayden. The Sweet bottle's Nutrition Facts give 10 grams of total sugars and 210 milligrams of sodium in a 2-tablespoon serving, which is 5 grams of sugar and 105 milligrams of sodium to the tablespoon, but the record carries no ingredient list, so its order cannot be read and its base is recorded as other.

The story Tradition

The Jones family cooks whole hogs over wood at Ayden and has since Pete Jones opened the Skylight Inn in 1947, in a line the family traces to Skilton Dennis in 1830. The sauce a whole-hog pit of that kind puts on chopped pork is vinegar, pepper and salt, mixed by the bucket at the block.

Inference — the bottle is a separate object from the bucket. A sweet sauce at five grams of sugar to the tablespoon is not what goes on the meat at the pit; it is what a customer takes home, and what ships. The distance between a pit's own sauce and the pit's bottled sauce is one of the things this project can only measure on one side.

Today Harvested · web-openfoodfacts

Sold from the restaurant's online store at Winterville. The Sweet bottle's panel is recorded in Open Food Facts; no ingredient list is published with it.

Facts

baseheavy-tomato
stylesEastern North Carolina barbecue
regionEastern North Carolina, North Carolina
linksSam Jones BBQ — online store · Open Food Facts 0806802958422
confidencemedium · needs verification · updated 2026-09-16

On the label

what was readbottle · Sam Jones BBQ, Winterville, NC
vinegar?
tomato?
mustard?
sugar?
sugar per tablespoon5 g (a tablespoon of table sugar is about 12.6 g)
sodium per tablespoon105 mg

Read from this page, 2026-09-16. The Sweet BBQ Sauce bottle, Open Food Facts barcode 0806802958422: 2 Tbsp (33.25 g), 10 g total sugars, 210 mg sodium, 47 kcal. The record carries no ingredient list, so every rank is null and the base is other — the word Sweet on the bottle names a taste, not a base. 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.

Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce

Wikibooks Cookbook · read 16 September 2026 · source · CC BY-SA 4.0
1. Start with apple cider vinegar in saucepan over medium heat. 2. Add salt, ground black pepper, crushed red pepper, molasses, and honey. 3. Let mixture heat up, but not quite boil. 4. Mix well. 5. Return sauce to the jug that the vinegar came in to cool.

Makes ¾ gallon.

The vinegar sauce of the county the Jones family cooks in, 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.

Eastern North Carolina Barbecued Pig

Wikibooks Cookbook · read 16 September 2026 · source · CC BY-SA 4.0
1. Salt hams, ribs/midsection and shoulders liberally and place skin side up on either a gas or charcoal grill or a BBQ pit. 2. Keep lid closed, and aim for a heat of approximately 275–350°F. 3. Allow 1 hour per 10 pounds cooking time (gas or charcoal). 4. 2 hours before being done, place pig with the skin side down. As soon as it is flipped, pour BBQ sauce on meat side. 5. Close lid and allow skin to crisp. 6. The pig will be done to perfection when the ham bone can be twisted freely. 7. Lift lid and allow guests to pick/pull meat, or the chef can remove meat and chop to their liking on a chopping block.

Makes about 27 lb of meat, serving 30–40.

The whole hog the sauce is made for, at a size a home pit can manage.

Barbecue Sauce (Sweet)

Wikibooks Cookbook · read 16 September 2026 · source · CC BY-SA 4.0
1. Combine all ingredients together and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 to 15 minutes, until it thickens slightly. 2. Arrange chicken pieces or pork chops in a greased baking dish. 3. Pour half of sauce over and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 40 minutes. 4. Pour remaining sauce over before serving.

Ketchup, cider vinegar and brown sugar, for the sweet bottle's end of the range.

Its kin

placesSam Jones BBQthe Winterville restaurant whose name the bottle carries.peopleSam Jonesthe third-generation pitmaster the bottle is named for.stylesEastern North Carolina barbecuethe style the pit cooks, which the sweet bottle is not a bottling of.saucesvinegar-and-pepper saucewhat goes on the chopped pork at the block, against the five grams of sugar a tablespoon in the bottle.the pitwhole hogthe cook the house is built on.placesSkylight Inn BBQthe Ayden pit the family has cooked at since 1947.

Sources

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.

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