Barbecue historian Visits Home Team

Lake E. High Jr., president of the South Carolina Barbeque Association will make a pit stop at Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ from 6 to 9 p.m. this Friday, Oct. 11. High is a former stock broker-turned historian/author/BBQ enthusiast. He’s the former chairman of the South Carolina League of the South
Come chew the fat with High and learn about the origins of barbecue in the Palmetto State. In his book A History of South Carolina Barbecue, High explains the sauce mostly closely associated with South Carolina – Mustard Sauce — gets its roots from large German heritage found in South Carolina.
According to High, the British colony of South Carolina encouraged, recruited, and even paid the ocean passage for thousands of German families so they could take up residence in South Carolina in the 1730s and continuing into the 1750s. They were a hard working, sturdy and resourceful people who were given to an intensive family-farm type of agriculture, as opposed to the plantation system favored by the English settlers. Those German families were given land grants up the Santee, Congaree, Broad and Saluda Rivers as they came in successive waves over a twenty plus year migration. Those rivers all flow into each other and fall from the South Carolina Upcountry to the Lowcountry.
South Carolina’s mustard sauce can be clearly traced to those German settlers and is still in abundant evidence today, even after 250 years, in the names of the families who sell mustard-based sauces and mustard based barbecue to the public. The Bessinger family is the most prominent in the mustard based barbeque business, but other German names are legion in the South Carolina barbeque business – Shealy, Hite, Sweatman, Sikes, Price, Lever, Meyer, Kiser, and Zeigler are other examples and there are many more.
 
Home Team BBQ is located at 1205 Ashley River Road for more information call 225-7427 or visit www.hometeambbq.com.