East Carolina Vinegar Sauce Recipe: Sweet Heat with Some Tang

To me, East Carolina vinegar sauce is really as simple as vinegar, water, hot sauce or chili flakes, and sugar.

My recipe is essentially sweet, heat, and tang – the perfect synergy for pork.

Ingredients for East Carolina Vinegar Sauce

These are the typical amounts that I stick to with vinegar sauce.

• 2 Cups Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Ground Cayenne
• 1 Tablespoon Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 1/8 Tsp Morton Kosher Salt

I’ll also often incorporate 1-2 tablespoons from my dry rub that I’m using that day.

Note: Ingredients like Cayenne, hot sauce, and red pepper flakes can go a long way.

If you’re trying to scale this recipe to say a gallon of cider vinegar, only increase the heat to around 2 tablespoons of ground cayenne and 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes at most.

Ingredient Explanations and Possible Substitutes for this Recipe

Vinegar

This is a vinegar-based sauce that people typically use Cider Vinegar for.

If you don’t care for ACV:

1. Do half and half with ACV and Apple Juice – so 1 cup of ACV and 1 Cup of Apple Juice
2. Switch to Distilled White Vinegar.

No matter how you slice it though East Carolina vinegar sauce has vinegar in it and it’s usually cider vinegar.

Dark Brown Sugar

Most vinegar sauces are paired with pork and most pork rubs contain lots of sugar.

To help compliment that, usually some form of sugar is used in the sauce.

If you don’t have Dark brown sugar you can use light brown sugar, white sugar, or turbinado sugar – any of those will suffice.

Heat/Spicy Ingredients

Most vinegar sauces have some form of heat; It’s either hot sauce or chili peppers.

I’m partial to chili peppers like ground cayenne and red pepper flakes.

If you don’t have any of those, add 1/4 cup of your favorite hot sauce instead.

Kosher Salt

The salt is simply used to round out the ingredients and to help balance the sugar and vinegar.

Making the Sauce

Combine the listed ingredients in a mixing bowl and ensure the sugar and salt are well incorporated.

You don’t need to heat this sauce up, it’s good to go once all ingredients are combined.

I do find that the sauce tastes better around 24 hours later.

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5 from 1 vote

East Carolina Vinegar Sauce

Sweet Heat with some Tang

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Total Time5 minutes mins

Course: Condiments

Equipment

• Mixing Bowl

Ingredients

• ▢ 2 Cups Apple Cider Vinegar
• ▢ 1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
• ▢ 1 Tbsp Ground Cayenne
• ▢ 1 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes
• ▢ 1/8 Tsp Morton Kosher Salt

Instructions

• Combine the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Ensure the sugar and salt are fully dissolved.
• Once combined, transfer to a major jar or similar container and then refrigerate.
• Refrigerate for 24-48 hours to enhance the flavor.