Posted by Des Moines Register, IA on June 24, 2009 at 10:45:38:
Why Iowa barbecue tastes so sweet
By TOM PERRY • tperry@dmreg.com • June 24, 2009
Several Des Moines-area barbecue restaurants allow customers to pick and choose sauces from all over the map, a practice that borders on heresy in some parts of the country.
The menu at Jethro's BBQ, a sports bar in the Drake University neighborhood, for example, specifically pays homage to barbecue geography, including on its menu a Kansas City-style sweet tomato sauce, Carolina-style vinegar sauce, a Georgia-style mustard sauce and an Alabama-style white mayonnaise sauce.
At Uncle Wendell's on Ingersoll Avenue, a bottle of vinegar sauce sits among bottles of locally made Russ and Frank's and Cookies' tomato-based sauces.
But more often than not, Iowans are going to toe the line with other Midwesterners, local barbecue restaurateurs and competitors agree. That means, when given a choice, they will reach for a Kansas City-style tomato-based sauce that tends to be at the tangy-sweet end of the flavor spectrum.
"You've got to see it as a regional type of a taste, more than just something from one city," Iowa Barbecue Society President Lew Miller of Marshalltown said. "But it is true that a lot of restaurants are following the lines of primarily sweet."
Iowa, nationally known for its love of cinnamon rolls, may have a sweet-toothed population. But the proliferation of barbecue cooking competitions may be contributing to the sustained popularity of sweeter sauces here and elsewhere in the Midwest.
Almost every weekend from May through October, there will be a barbecue contest in or near Iowa. This weekend about 70 barbecue teams are expected to show up in Marshalltown for the 11th Iowa State Barbecue Championships.
The type of barbecue that wins competition tends to be different from the type of barbecue that wins over restaurant patrons, said Anne Rehnstrom, marketing assistant for the National Pork Board.
In competitions, such as this weekend's state championship, the taste of meat will matter greatly, just as it would at a restaurant. But contestant submissions will also be judged for appearance, tenderness and texture.
"A lot of people like ribs with the meat falling off the bone but a contestant in a competition will loose points for that," said Rehnstrom, who coordinates the annual BarbeQLossal in Des Moines.
Still, sweet sauce is tough to beat in a contest. In fact, sauces in competitions tend to be even sweeter than most commercial sauces, said Darren Warth, co-owner of Smokey D's/Absolute Flavors in Des Moines and a competitor who is dominating in-state competitions this year and who has won top awards in more than a dozen states.
"You can make a sauce too sweet for a restaurant," Warth said. "In a competition, a judge is only going to take one bite. So you have to go for the 'Wow factor.' But a customer is going to eat a plateful, so you don't want it overly sweet."
More than some regions of the country, where barbecue tradition is entrenched, Iowa is in a place where flavor preferences may change, observers agree.
"Yeah, you would think that with the access we have had to great pork and beef, that there would have been a lot of people doing barbecue for years," Warth said. He added that because Iowa only recently bellied up to barbecue, restaurateurs may have more flexibility here than elsewhere.
For example, in some regions of the country providing sauce options may be tantamount to sacrilege, but in Des Moines, almost no style would be truly off-limits, especially in restaurants.
"Any time you go out for barbecue in Iowa, you should go out with an open mind," said Adam Littman, owner of Papa Chubby's BBQ in Ankeny.
Indeed, barbecue choices abound in the Des Moines area, which wasn't always the case. A search of DesMoines.Metromix.com found 35 restaurants, most of them independently owned, in the barbecue category. That's 33 more than the number of barbecue restaurants found in the 1989 Des Moines City directory.
Most restaurants that feature barbecue follow a standard-operating procedure. Meat, typically beef brisket or pork ribs or shoulder, will be cooked slowly with wood smoke and low heat, often between 180 and 220 degrees Fahrenheit.
The type of wood - oak, maple, cherry, apple, hickory or something else - can vary from region to region, but the one constant is that low temperatures are used to cook authentic barbecue.
The way barbecue is dressed up can also vary from region to region. At Papa Chubby's Littman likes to tell the story about pulled pork sandwiches, which he used to serve Carolina-style with coleslaw on top of the pork.
"We had customers send them back,'" he said. "They had never seen them that way and thought the kitchen made a mistake.''
To avoid confusion, and give customers a choice, slaw now comes on the side, Littman said.
Of course, despite all the attention sauce gets, the most important part of barbecue is the meat and the way it is cooked or smoked, barbecue purists agree.
"Just because something has barbecue sauce on it, doesn't mean that it's barbecue," Littman said. "Good barbecue really doesn't need sauce."
Types of barbecue
Iowa is famous for pork. But when it comes to barbecue, the state lives in the shadow of places such as Kansas City, Memphis, the Carolinas, and Texas, which have their own celebrated styles.
Kansas City
Sticky, sweet and thick tomato-based sauce on ribs and beef brisket.
Memphis
Sweet and tangy with ketchup and some vinegar. Dry pork ribs are famous there.
Carolinas
Vinegar-based sauce in eastern North Carolina; vinegar and ketchup- based sauce in western North Carolina; mustard-based sauce in South Carolina.
Texas
Beef is more popular there, and often Texas barbecue does not include sauce.
Iowa
Sauces are mostly influenced by Kansas City, but nothing is sacred.
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