Carolina BarbecueWords (15)

bar-b-q, bar-b-que, barbeque

The cooked meat itself — in the Carolinas, pork cooked slowly over coals or in a cooker and then chopped, pulled or sliced — and, by extension, the place that sells it and the gathering that eats it.

Carolina Gold rice, Carolina Gold sauce, Carolina Gold BBQ sauce

Two South Carolina things with one name. The sauce: the yellow-mustard barbecue sauce of the Midlands — mustard, vinegar, sugar and spices — which Wikipedia says is sometimes called Carolina Gold and which Maurice…

chopped barbecue, coarse chopped, coarse chop

The way most Carolina barbecue reaches the tray: cooked meat cut across on a block with cleavers — in the east fine enough to hold the thin vinegar sauce, in the Piedmont in larger pieces.

Lexington dip, barbecue dip, the dip

The Lexington word for its sauce: vinegar, water, ketchup or tomato, salt, black and red pepper, sugar to taste — thin enough to pour, reddish rather than red.

down east, Downeast, Down-East

In North Carolina, the coastal plain east of Raleigh — the barbecue east, where the hog is cooked whole and the sauce has no tomato; eastern North Carolina barbecue is also called Down East barbecue.

the Dutch Fork, the Fork

The land between the Saluda and the Broad rivers above their meeting at Columbia, in Lexington, Newberry and Richland counties, settled by German-speaking Protestants in the middle of the eighteenth century and named…

fixin's, fixings, all the fixins

The sides and trimmings that come with the meat: slaw, hushpuppies or cornbread, boiled potatoes in the east, hash and rice in South Carolina, pickles, sweet tea.

whole hog, hogg

In Carolina barbecue speech the animal is a hog. Whole hog is the eastern North Carolina and Pee Dee style; a hog killing is the winter work of the farm; a hog's size is its dressed weight.

light-bread, lightbread, white bread

The Southern name for white yeast bread — a store loaf or a soft bun — as against cornbread, biscuits and pone, a dense cornmeal cake.

Pedee, Peedee, the Pee Dee

The river and the region. The Pee Dee rises in the North Carolina mountains as the Yadkin, takes the name Pee Dee below the mouth of the Uwharrie, crosses into South Carolina and reaches the sea at Winyah Bay.

the Piedmont, Piedmont-style, Piedmont Triad

The plateau between the coastal plain and the Blue Ridge, from New York to Alabama and nearly 300 miles wide in North Carolina; its eastern edge is the fall line, where rivers drop off hard rock onto the soft plain and…

barbecue pit, the pit, pit house

The place the cooking happens. First a trench in the ground filled with hardwood coals, the split hog on a rack above; then a wide, shallow container of cinder block, brick or steel above ground, still a pit; then, at…

pit master, pit-master, pit man

The person who runs the pit — the fire, the coals, the turning of the hog, the call that it is done. A recent word for an old job.

pulled-pork, pulled

Pork cooked slowly over coals or in a cooker until it comes off the bone in strands, then taken apart by hand or with forks rather than cut.

cole slaw, coleslaw, cold slaw

Shredded raw cabbage, dressed and served cold, on every Carolina barbecue tray and most sandwiches.