When someone mentions barbecue, images come to the mind like cooking at the backyard grill, a social gathering, cooking outdoors, and cooking meat slowly over wood and smoke that adds flavor to the food.

Different cooks have different preferences and styles in their cooking. Some prefer rubbing the seasoning, whether wet or dry, before cooking, and some prefer to soak the meat first in special marinades that could be sops, mops, and finishing. The preparation and ingredients for marinating may differ from region to region. The preferred wood to be used can also differ. However, no perfect barbecue will taste as good without the perfect barbecue sauce.

Barbecue sauces can generally be categorized by what they are based on. Common examples are tomato, vinegar, and mustard-based sauces. To give the barbecue its distinctive taste and prevent the meat from burning easily, barbecue sauces are applied to the meat while being cooked with the exemption of tomato-based barbecue sauces as tomato-based sauces burn easier than the other kinds of sauces.

Barbecue sauce preparation can either be sweet, sour, tangy, spicy, hot, thick, or thin. The varieties are almost endless, making barbecues popular because anyone can make his special preparation depending on taste, and anyone can create his way of serving the barbecue.

Recipes for barbecues can also be guarded. And good barbecue sauces can be purchased at almost any store. But the only perfect barbecue sauce is the one that you can create for yourself.
Remember, whatever works for you and your family can be a great barbecue sauce. So, start experimenting. That is the only way to start good cooking.

Tomato-based barbecue sauce is the most widely used. Some say that it is the most popular. Its popularity, however, may be due to the simplicity of preparation, and besides, tomatoes are ingredients that could easily be found. The point to remember in preparing tomato-based barbecue sauces is to cook the tomatoes very well to blend with the other ingredients.

Tomato-based barbecue sauces are acidic. Thus, it has the property to break down all the flavors of other ingredients blending them with its own. But because of its propensity to burn, limit the usage of tomato-based barbecue sauce while cooking. To make it even more flavorful, prepare tomato barbecue sauces a day in advance.

All prefer all-purpose BBQ sauces. These barbecue sauces are great for grilling pork.

Vinegar is a great meat tenderizer. It is also more acidic than tomatoes. Because of their acidic content, vinegar-based sauces tend to penetrate deep into the meat. To make this barbecue sauce more flavorful, experiment mixing it with chili, cider vinegar or red pepper, sugar salt, and all the other ingredients that you want it to have.

Barbecue sauces today have different uses departing from their traditional purpose. It now serves as a condiment present on almost any table like ketchup, salsa, salt, pepper, and Tabasco. Visit Ray Ray's BBQ to get more exclusive BBQ products with free tips.