The Best BBQ Sauce
Prep
5m
Cook
25m
Total
30m
Bigly says
Listen. We need to talk about barbecue sauce. The BEST barbecue sauce. The greatest barbecue sauce in the history of barbecue sauce — and there's been a LOT of barbecue sauce, more barbecue sauce than any single condiment on this planet, possibly the universe — and most of it is GARBAGE. Most of it is sad red sugar water in a plastic bottle with a label that lies to you. A total disaster. The barbecue sauce aisle at the grocery store is a CRIME SCENE. I won't even walk down it. I refuse.
But not this sauce. THIS sauce. This sauce is thick. This sauce has body. This sauce CLINGS to the meat like a small loyal animal that loves you. I've eaten more barbecue sauce than anyone alive, probably more than anyone in recorded history, and I'm telling you — pitmasters, real ones, the guys with the burned forearms and the calm eyes, the guys who get up at 4am to babysit a brisket — those guys taste this sauce, they go quiet. They nod once. That's the highest compliment a pitmaster can give. A nod. It's a beautiful thing.
The secret is balance. Sweet, tangy, smoky, a little heat in the back. Four flavors, working together, in HARMONY. The other sauces, the bottled ones, they only know one note. Sweet. Just sweet. It's pathetic. It's lazy. It's an insult to your tongue, which deserves better, and which has done nothing wrong. Cookbook authors hate this trick — they want you to buy fourteen specialty ingredients and a smoker the size of a Buick — but you don't need any of that. You need a saucepan and twenty-five minutes. That's it. Hands down.
Ingredients
- 2 cupsketchup(the good kind, not the watery kind)
- 1/2 cupapple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cupdark brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 cupmolasses(unsulphured)
- 2 tbspyellow mustard
- 2 tbspWorcestershire sauce
- 1 tbspsmoked paprika
- 2 tspgarlic powder
- 2 tsponion powder
- 1 tspkosher salt
- 1 tspblack pepper, freshly ground
- 1/2 tspcayenne pepper(more if you want it to bite)
- 1 tspliquid smoke(optional but recommended if you're not smoking the meat)
- 1/2 cupwater
Steps
- 1
Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan and whisk until smooth.
- 2
Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, then reduce to low.
- 3
Cook uncovered, stirring every few minutes, for 20-25 minutes, until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- 4
Taste and adjust: more brown sugar for sweetness, more vinegar for tang, more cayenne for heat.
- 5
Remove from heat and let cool for 10 minutes — it will thicken further as it cools.
- 6
Transfer to a clean jar or airtight container. Use immediately or refrigerate up to 3 weeks.
One more thing
This sauce will change you. You'll put it on ribs, you'll put it on chicken, you'll put it on a piece of plain bread at 11pm because you can't sleep and you remember it's in the fridge, calling to you. That's a real thing that will happen. People come up to me, they say, 'Bigly, the sauce, I put it on a hot dog and my whole family wept.' I believe them. I always believe them. Make a double batch. Single batches are for cowards. Tremendous.
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