South Carolina Mustard Barbecue Sauce
from http://bbq.about.com/

If you travel south from North Carolina you will wander into mustard country - the "Mustard Belt" of central South Carolina, where pit-smoked, chopped whole hog is still the meat of choice, boasts the country's most pronounced use of an intense mustard-based barbecue sauce. Here barbecue sauces are thick and yellow and to even mention tomatoes can get you more trouble than you want. Sauces made from mustard are perfect for pork. In fact this is the sauce of the South Carolina Pig-Pickin'. These sauces are prepared and set out for the diners to dip into as they pull smoked bits of pork from the whole hog.

Favored in the Midlands of South Carolina (from around Columbia to the coast around Charleston), Mustard based barbecue sauces have their origins in the 18th century when German immigrants brought this style of sauce from Europe and combined it with the indigenous pork barbecue. Some mustard barbecue sauces contain beer - a throwback to those German roots.

If you plan on mixing up a mustard barbecue sauce remember to cook it thoroughly and let it sit for a while before you plan to serve it. Like tomato based sauces, mustard sauces need time and heat to blend the flavors.

*Brian and I used this sauce to smoke both pork and lamb ribs and chicken legs. It worked very well and we were impressed with the flavor that it gave to the lamb ribs. We usually use the Apple City Barbecue Grand World Champion Ribs recipe when we smoke ribs because we like the apple flavor, but this was an excellent sauce for lamb ribs. Heat any extra sauce you have to the boiling point to use as a sauce at the table. A note about the flavor: you would think that this sauce tastes real mustardy, but with the sugar and other ingredients, it doesn't. It's a nice change from the traditional red sauces.

1 cup yellow mustard (yellow is traditional)
1/2 cup WHITE balsamic vinegar (see note below) - can substitute white vinegar or rice wine vinegar, NOT traditional Balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp molasses, mild
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients together and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.

This sauce is excellent on grilled pork loin sliced about the thickness of a pork chop. Marinade the cutlets in the sauce for a few hours. Serve basil pesto on the side for a extra special treat.

Yields: 2 cups

Note: White balsamic vinegar is made from white wine vinegar made from Trebbiano grapes grown in the Modena region of Italy combined with concentrated, uncooked grape must. White Balsamic vinegar has a light slightly sweet flavor with a moderate amount of acidity about 5.2% to about 7.0% and lacks the rich caramelized flavor of traditional Balsamic. It works well in salad dressings and in any sauce where a red vinegar is undesirable. Don't confuse this with traditional Balsamic vinegar which is dark in color with a concentrated sweet flavor.
Substitute White wine vinegar OR Rice wine vinegar (mild flavored)