a sauceWells Hog Heaven Barbecue Sauce

also: Hog Heaven · Wells Hog Heaven

Hog Heaven, in Pender County.

A vinegar-based sauce made at Burgaw, the seat of Pender County in southeastern North Carolina, and sold in that corner of the state. The maker gives no ingredient list and no Nutrition Facts on its site, so what is on record is the description rather than the measurement: a vinegar sauce for seasoning chopped and pulled pork.

The story Cited · web-wells-our-story

The maker's account sets the sauce in the hog-killing calendar of southeastern North Carolina, when farming families processed several hogs at one event in the autumn and winter, and barbecued pigs between spring and fall for occasions and gatherings. Farmers made their own vinegar sauce to season the pork, and the choice at the grill was pulled or chopped. Wells Hog Heaven Barbecue Sauce began in 1982 at Burgaw with the Wells family. The present owners bought the business in 2008 and have since parted from the original meat store, keeping the sauce.

Inference — the bottle sits in a gap the harvest file makes visible. Of sixty-eight bottles read on 16 September 2026, the ones a reader can measure are the ones a supermarket chain or a national manufacturer put on a shelf; the ones a pit or a family sells locally almost never publish a panel. Wells is in the second group.

Facts

base	vinegar-pepper
styles	Eastern North Carolina barbecue
region	Eastern North Carolina, North Carolina
links	Wells Hog Heaven — Our Story
confidence	medium · needs verification · updated 2026-09-16

On the label

what was read	bottle · Wells Hog Heaven, Burgaw, NC
vinegar	?
tomato	?
mustard	?
sugar	?

Read from this page, 2026-09-16. A profile with nothing measured in it. The maker's site, read 2026-09-16, prints no ingredient list and no Nutrition Facts, and no retailer page carrying the label was found. The base is the maker's own word, vinegar based, not a reading of an ingredient order. Left here so the bottle is on the page and the gap is countable. 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.

Pepper Vinegar

Mrs. Mary Randolph · The Virginia House-Wife · 1824 · p. 163 · source · Public domain

Get one dozen pods of pepper when ripe, take out the stems, and cut them in two; put them in a kettle with three pints of vinegar, boil it away to one quart, and strain it through a sieve. A little of this is excellent in gravy of every kind, and gives a flavour greatly superior to black pepper; it is also very fine when added to each of the various catsups for fish sauce.

Peppers boiled down in vinegar and strained: the oldest written form of a Coastal Plain vinegar sauce. 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.

Sauce for Barbecues (receipt 335)

Mrs. A. P. Hill · Mrs. Hill's New Cook-Book · 1867 · p. 171 · source · Public domain

Melt half a pound of butter; stir into it a large tablespoonful of mustard, half a teaspoonful of red pepper, one of black, salt to taste; add vinegar until the sauce has a strong acid taste. The quantity of vinegar will depend upon the strength of it. As soon as the meat becomes hot, begin to baste, and continue basting frequently until it is done; pour over the meat any sauce that remains.

Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce

Wikibooks Cookbook · read 16 September 2026 · source · CC BY-SA 4.0

¾ gallons apple cider vinegar
⅛ cup salt
¼ cup ground black pepper
¼ cup red pepper flakes
1 cup molasses
2 cups honey

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.

Its kin

stylesEastern North Carolina barbecuethe style it seasons: the vinegar sauce of the Coastal Plain, here at its southeastern corner.saucesvinegar-and-pepper saucethe sauce it is a bottling of, by the maker's own description.the pithog killingthe autumn and winter event the maker's own history starts from, when several hogs were processed at once.wordspulled porkone of the two ways the maker's history says the meat came off the grill; chopped is the other.wordschoppedthe other of the two.

Sources

Our Story · link
Bottled Carolina barbecue sauce labels, 68 rows · link
The Virginia House-Wife, or Methodical Cook — Mrs. Mary Randolph, 1824 · 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
Cookbook:Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce — Wikibooks Cookbook · 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.

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