Best Homemade BBQ Sauce Recipe - Crunchy Creamy Sweet (2024)

FAQs

How to balance out sweetness in barbecue sauce? ›

Vinegars: These can help balance the sweetness of the standard off-the-shelf sauce. Apple cider vinegar is most common in barbecue sauce, but rice vinegar can do the job nicely without being so heavily tart. You can also look to citrus fruit for acidity as well.

Add smoky, spicy, or tangy flavors for a semi-homemade bbq sauce that tastes just like it's from scratch. You can spice up bbq sauce and add some texture and flavor to store-bought bbq sauce with chopped kimchi, bacon bits, sautéed onions, or jalapeños, fresh herbs, or fruit like pineapple and peaches.

Ingredients vary, but most include vinegar or tomato paste (or a combination) as a base, as well as liquid smoke, onion powder, spices such as mustard and black pepper, and sweeteners such as sugar or molasses.

Bobby Flay's Tips For Jazzing Up Store-Bought Barbecue Sauce

The one barbecue sauce he can't stop using is the Bone Suckin' brand, as he revealed while giving a tour of his pantry on Instagram.

How to Make Food Less Sweet. Add an acid or seasonings such as vinegar or citrus juice; chopped fresh herbs; a dash of cayenne pepper; or, for sweet dishes, a bit of liqueur or espresso powder.

Create depth by adding dark chocolate and coffee to your barbecue sauce. These two, feature a bitter-sweet combo that can truly enhance the blend of spices and flavors present in your bottled barbecue sauce. Enhance your Barbecue Sauce using almost anything, including your favorite beer.

Stubb's Original BBQ Sauce

You can't go wrong with Stubb's sauces, which are a tangy mix of tomato, vinegar, molasses, and spices.

The problem is that most store-bought barbecue sauces just aren't that stellar. They're off-the-scales sweet, packed with fake "smoke" flavor, or weirdly viscous like butterscotch. If you want to really elevate your barbecue, you're going to have to make your own sauce.

The base ingredients of barbecue sauce usually include tomato sauce or ketchup, vinegar, and sweeteners, such as molasses or brown sugar. Other common ingredients include Worcestershire sauce, mustard, garlic, onion powder, and various spices, which can include paprika, cumin, and chili powder.

As you might've guessed, these sauces use tomato as the primary ingredient. To that, other ingredients are added to create different flavors, for example: sugar, molasses, vinegar, and various spices.

What are the three types of BBQ sauce? ›

Generally, barbecue sauces is categorized into four varieties: tomato-based sauces, vinegar-based sauces, mustard-based sauces, and mayonnaise-based sauces. Each category can have a range of BBQ sauce styles, ranging from sweet and tangy to hot and spicy.

The notes of molasses are key for giving this sauce classic BBQ flavor. Tamari – Worcestershire sauce is a common ingredient in many traditional barbecue sauce recipes.

Onion powder, cumin, garlic, peppers: these are all go-to flavors for amping up the flavor profile of a too-bland, too-generic barbecue sauce. My two personal favorite ingredients to add are Worcestershire sauce and plain yellow mustard.

Ketchup is the base of the sauce, Worcestershire sauce adds umami, light brown sugar brings sweetness, vinegar brings tang, and two spices, paprika and cayenne pepper, add a smoky flavor and some heat.