Mayo

Mayo-based BBQ sauce traces back to Alabama white sauce, the tangy, black pepper and vinegar mayo that pitmasters started mopping onto smoked chicken instead of the usual tomato-based glaze. Swap out sugar and tomato for egg, vinegar and horseradish, and you get a cooling counterpoint to smoke rather than another sweet coating.

It's built for smoked and grilled chicken, wings, pulled pork, chips and wedges, and slaws, anywhere a tomato-based sauce would normally go but a cool, creamy contrast makes more sense against the char and the bark.

The pick of the shelf right now is Meat Mitch's White Sauce WHOMP!, the genuine article: a real US import out of Kansas City rather than a local copy of the style, built on horseradish bite, brown sugar sweetness, cayenne warmth and a lemony vinegar lift over a creamy egg-based body, poured from a 621ml bottle.

It's gluten free with no HFCS, sitting at a mild 2/10 on the heat scale, tangy and peppery rather than genuinely hot, and built on egg and vinegar rather than the buttermilk base of a ranch dressing. Meat Mitch calls it the anti-ranch, and one drizzle over smoked chicken and chips makes the case. Creamy, tangy, built to cut through the smoke.

Explore more: our dips and ketchup collections.