What Makes Alabama-Style BBQ Sauce White

When you think of barbecue, you probably think of a classic sweet and tangy barbecue sauce with a reddish-brown hue, but in Alabama, chefs are whipping up a very different kind of barbecue sauce. Alabama-style barbecue sauce is more commonly known as Alabama white sauce, which should be your first clue that this is unlike any barbecue you've tried before. Unlike the majority of America's Barbecue Belt, Alabamans do not favor a tomato-based barbecue sauce. Their take on the condiment looks closer to ranch or Caesar dressing — cream-colored with flecks of spices throughout.

So what is Alabama white sauce, and how did it get to be that color? What really sets Alabama white sauce apart is the fact that it uses mayonnaise as a base, creating the signature hue. The other two main ingredients are vinegar and black pepper. Beyond that, recipes vary, with some cooks adding sugar to their white sauce to balance the vinegar or Worcestershire for a layer of umami. Spicy food lovers may add cayenne pepper, hot sauce, or even horseradish to give it a kick. Different barbecue joints throughout the state will have their own versions of Alabama white sauce, but there is only one original.

White barbecue sauce was invented at Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama by its eponymous owner and pitmaster. Gibson first began selling barbecue in 1925, smoking pork and chickens in his backyard. On weekdays, he was a railroad worker, but on weekends, he was the pitmaster, welcoming local customers who dined at his picnic table. His food became so popular that he had to expand his seating by nailing wooden boards to trees to make benches. Eventually, he opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant, which changed locations numerous times over the 30s and 40s before settling into its current location in the '50s. It's still open today.

White sauce was a part of Big Bob's menu from the get-go. It's unclear what led Gibson to invent this concoction, but nobody else was serving anything like it at the time. The uniqueness of white sauce was instrumental in growing Gibson's business, as customers knew there was only one place you could get it. Soon, variations were popping up in barbecue joints all over north Alabama, and it is now a defining part of the state's cuisine.

Alabama-style barbecue sauce doesn't look like any other barbecue sauce, it doesn't taste like any other barbecue sauce, and it's also used for its own particular purposes. Big Bob Gibson invented white sauce specifically for serving on chicken. The other meat on his menu, pork, came with a classic vinegar-based barbecue sauce.

Today, people have branched out beyond chicken, and the sauce is typically served as a table condiment for diners to put on whatever they want. It's not uncommon to see people drizzle white sauce over pork shoulder or ribs. Still, white sauce will always be most associated with poultry– but not just chicken. Smoked turkey has become a quintessential pairing as well, so if you're wondering what to serve with Alabama white sauce, you can't go wrong with either bird.

Big Bob Gibson had a particular method for his chicken. He would spatchcock it, a popular cooking technique for roast chicken, and smoke it over hickory wood, which is the standard choice for Alabama-style barbecue as it grows locally. The real trick was in Gibson's saucing technique, which entailed dunking the whole chicken in a vat of sauce before serving it.