South Carolina Mustard
South Carolina Mustard barbecue swaps the tomato or straight vinegar of its neighbors for a tangy yellow mustard sauce, sometimes called "Carolina Gold." It's most associated with the Midlands, built on pork, and tuned tangy and a little sweet rather than hot.
Sby SoCueCoHow you know it
The Tells
- Sauce: yellow mustard, vinegar, sugar, and pepper — "Carolina Gold"
- Cut: pork shoulder or whole hog, pulled or chopped
- Wood: oak and hickory
- Sides: hash over rice, hush puppies
- Region: South Carolina Midlands
The story
Where It Comes From
The mustard sauce is generally traced to German and German-Swiss settlers who moved into the South Carolina Midlands in the 1700s, bringing a taste for mustard-based condiments with them. It took root around Columbia and the Orangeburg-area pits and stayed a Midlands signature even as vinegar- and ketchup-based sauces spread elsewhere across the Carolinas. It remains the smallest by geography of the Carolinas' major sauce traditions, but one of the most distinct on the plate.
Bring it home
Cook It
Keep exploring