BBQ Sauce Take 1: Everything But The Kitchen Sink

I have always wanted to try making my own barbeque sauce.  I’ve seen it done on TV, had friends make it.  I’ve just never done it.  The final straw was when Bullseye stopped making their Honey Smoke sauce, which was my favorite store bought sauce.  That actually happened quite a while ago, and I really just haven’t made any barbeque anything since.  But this weekend we decided to have a cookout.  We weren’t actually doing the meat (our friend Jon made the most amazing smoked Boston butt this weekend–which prompted a 2 day spree of jokes about his ass), but I thought I’d try my hand at making some sauce myself.

I read a number of recipes to get an idea of the sorts of ingredients I might want and then, well, I just started throwing stuff into the pot.  Of course I used tomato sauce as a base and went from there.  I have always preferred sweet sauces, so that’s what I was going for.  The initial mixture my husband pronounced to be like oversweet marinara sauce.  So I wound up cutting the sweet with quite a bit more vinegar.  I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out, but I put it on some chicken and grilled it for supper.  The results were totally tasty, if not quite what I was going for.  This is not the kind of sauce you just pour out over stuff.  It really needs grilling to add that smokey flavor and a bit of carmelization of the sugars in the sauce.

Ingredients:

• 2 8 oz. cans of tomato sauce
• 1 5 oz. can tomato paste
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar Splenda
• 1/2 vidalia onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon chipolte chili powder
• 2 teaspoons smoked sweet paprika
• 1 dash cayenne pepper
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Dump everything into a 2 quart pot and simmer lightly.  When you add the baking soda it’s going to bubble (there’s vinegar in there, remember), but just keep stirring until the bubling from that stops.  Store in a jar in the fridge.  I have no idea how long it stays good. If you figure it out, let me know.

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