Try a little mustard sauce on your barbecue

Yellow American-style mustard didn’t originate as a Southern food condiment, but Carolina gold mustard barbecue sauce was invented in the South for the sole purpose of jazzing up pit-cooked pork barbecue. 

First, the mustard. Yellow mustard was invented in 1904 by the R.T. French Co. of Rochester, N.Y. 

Robert Timothy French was a spice trader who started his own company in 1880 to manufacture spices and extracts. His sons, George and Francis French, invented a new kind of prepared mustard, one that was yellow as well as milder, lighter and creamier than the spicy tan-brown mustards of the time. 

Their product, “French’s Cream Salad Brand Mustard,” was introduced at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and immediately became a big hit,” reported Alan Morrell of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. “The recipe has remained essentially the same since.”

 

“That recipe,” according to Roger M. Grace, editor and publisher of the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, based in Los Angeles, includes “water, mustard flour, sugar, salt, wheat flour, citric acid and turmeric.” 

“Turmeric is as much of a dye as a spice, turning foods yellow. It’s what lends yellow coloring to American mustards,” Grace wrote. 

Now, for the sauce: Using yellow mustard, two families near Holly Hill in Orangeburg County, S.C., concocted a mustard sauce recipe in 1933 that became the talk of the town. 

James Roller, writing for destination-bbq.com, singled out the patriarchs of the Bessinger and the Sweatman families as the inventors. Simple farmers trying to survive the Great Depression, the men who “cooked whole hogs in a dirt pit came up with a secret recipe for a sweet golden mustard-based barbecue sauce.” 

Descendants of Joseph James “Big Joe” Bessinger proved to be “disciples, spreading far and wide to preach the gospel of their father’s teachings” as a pitmaster, Roller said. Big Joe opened a restaurant in Holly Hill known simply as Eat at Joe’s.

 

“At least five of his sons learned to cook whole hogs over hickory woods and make their father’s sauce recipe,” Roller added. 

“Each of those Bessinger boys went on to open or work in barbecue restaurants, serving their own versions of that original ‘Carolina Gold’ sauce recipe their dad created, pouring it onto plates from Charleston to Columbia.” 

Harold Odell “Bub” Sweatman carried on his family tradition as well, opening Sweatman’s Bar-b-que in Holly Hill. 

From the second generation of Bessingers, brothers Melvin and Thomas opened Bessinger’s Bar-Be-Que in Charleston in 1961. 

Melvin went out on his own in 1990 and formed Melvin’s Legendary BBQ. Melvin’s son, David Bessinger, now owns and operates two Melvin’s restaurants, one in Charleston and another in neighboring Mount Pleasant.

 

David Bessinger

Meanwhile, Thomas Bessinger’s sons, Tommy Jr. and Michael Bessinger, are running the show at Bessinger’s restaurant, under their father’s supervision.

 

“Open a bottle of Bessinger’s sauce, and you aren’t going to taste ‘mustard,’” Roller said. “It is much more complex. The sauce is sweet and tangy and, well…simply perfect.” 

Andrew Zimmern, host of “Bizarre Foods” on the Travel Channel, said: “I never liked mustard-based BBQ sauces. Then I tried Bessinger’s. I blast through jars of this stuff in no time. My lips to God’s ears: this sauce is in a category of its own.” 

Customers can order sauce products online. Look for Thomas Bessinger’s Original Golden Recipe Bar-Be-Que Sauce and Melvin’s Legendary Original Golden Secret BBQ Sauce.