From Fried Green Tomatoes · 1991 · Reconstructed
Whistle Stop Pit Barbecue
Serve when
Serve it with a straight face and the café's motto: the secret's in the sauce.
In the movie
Theatrical
- The café's pit barbecue — praised across the counter, investigated by a Georgia lawman, and immortalized by the film's darkest joke about where the best barbecue in Alabama might have come from. The secret, famously, is in the sauce.
The barbecue is both the café's pride and the film's most audacious gag — a Southern Gothic punchline that made "the secret's in the sauce" a catchphrase with a wink. This version is strictly pork shoulder, for the record.
Ingredients
- For the rub (3 tablespoons):
- For the sauce:
Method
- Rub the shoulder the night before; rest it in the fridge.
- Smoke low and slow at 250°F over hickory until it hits 203°F inside and the bone slides free — 8 to 10 hours. (An oven at 275°F works; you'll just miss the smoke ring.)
- Simmer the sauce ingredients 10 minutes.
- Rest the pork an hour, then pull it into shreds and dress generously with sauce.
- Pile on buns with slaw. If a lawman asks what's in it, smile: the secret's in the sauce.