As we approach the summer, we do so with grilling in mind – from hamburgers to steaks, barbecued chicken and even pineapple and peaches.
With Memorial Day and the 4th of July right around the corner, many of us will be spending a great deal of time outside – cooking our own family meals or entertaining for family and friends. Besides having a fully functional grill, one of the BEST things to have is a great recipe for barbecue sauce…
Certainly you can head to the store and find over a dozen on the shelf – from hickory smoked to mesquite, spicy chili and tangy barbecue, making your own is so much better for the sheer fact that you control what goes in it.
Because I don’t really care to see high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors/flavorings in my food, taking that route makes so much more sense. Combined with the fact that it’s so much easier to whip up a batch in mere minutes than to buckle kids in the car and shop in a place that makes you feel so out of touch with the food you nourish your body with.
Lets talk about this sauce.
One of our kids had a piano recital and we were asked to bring a dish to pass – a dish everyone may love, and was appropriate for this time of the year.
Challenge accepted.
While my kids chanted “cook-ies! cook-ies! cook-ies!” … we thought that we’d embrace the kick off to summer with some barbecue sauce dumped on kielbasa bites made in our Instant Pot. That recipe is coming soon… until then, this sauce was the base for that recipe.
Who wants to stand in front of an oven and pull out trays of cookies over a period of an hour or two? Certainly not me, and definitely not when it’s 100 degrees outside.
So meet this barbecue sauce – I literally dumped everything together. Turned the stove on for a brief 10 minutes and minutes later I was wrapping up what could easily have been a whole afternoon of cooking.
But it wasn’t. ;) Gotta love it.
When the sauce is done, capture in a canning jar and refrigerate for a week, or use immediately if you want to slather that chicken and cook up on the grill.
Sweet and Tangy Barbecue Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 C ketchup
- 1/3 C apple cider vinegar with the mother
- 1/4 C brown sugar
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1.5 tsp chili powder
- 2 Tbsp tomato paste
- 1.5 Tbsp dark molasses
- 2 tsp ground pepper
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil on medium heat, stirring constantly.
- Reduce the heat to low, and cover.
- Simmer 10 minutes until thickened.
- Cool, then enjoy.
- If you are not using immediately, cover and refrigerate for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.
[…] we put this together for a church potluck, we doubled the recipe for the sweet and tangy barbecue sauce noted here, and doubled the Kielbasa. It was a HIT at church – I watched almost every man in the […]