In Texas we'd tell you that if the meat requires sauce, it's not cooked right. Of course, round here Cue means beef, usually brisket, prepared with dry rubs and cooked slowly with indirect heat and plenty of smoke from post oak or hickory. We incline our smokers in reverence toward Lockhart, the Mecca of Texas BBQ, where some of the better joints don't allow sauce and have only in recent years considered offering sides (other than slices of white bread, necessary to sop up the juices).

We're not averse to cooking the occasional pig, chicken, duck, lamb, or goat, and yeah, we would probably drown it with sauce to make it palatable. But anybody can do that. On Oprah yesterday (hey, I was home and I heard they were doing a food segment) they highlighted a restaurant in Ann Arbor that took a brisket, boiled it, then slow cooked it in an oven in red wine vinegar, ketchup, and brown sugar. Then they chopped it up and mixed in a ton of sauce. A travesty, nay, an abomination. Do they not get quality meat cuts up north? Or are they prohibited by some sissy environmental law from using flame and wood to cook?

In Texas, BBQ is about the meat. Becoming a first-rate BBQ pit master (they would reject the word chef, no matter how appropriate) takes years of practice at controlling temperature and smoke to create the perfect slab of meat - tender, smoky, rich, moist, and bursting with flavor. No sauce required.