Sweet and Tangy Recipe

This easy homemade barbecue sauce is delicious on pork, beef, or chicken. No one has to know how easy it is to make! You can even add it to vegetables, soups, and sauces for additional flavor. It’s delicious on a pork tenderloin or even air fried chicken.

Whether you like your barbecue sauce spicy or sweet, you only need a few ingredients that you probably have in your pantry and fridge to make it yourself. I prefer a spicier version that’s less sweet, but my husband is the opposite. The great thing about making my own sauce is that I can adjust it to suit both of us.

Whether you need extra flavor on beef, pork, chicken, or even beans, you can count on bbq sauce to deliver.

Ingredients

Here’s what I used for this sauce:

• Ketchup
• Brown sugar (light brown sugar or dark brown sugar)
• Paprika (regular or smoked)
• Vinegar (white or apple cider vinegar)
• Chili powder
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Cooking oil (any mild-flavored oil)
• Prepared mustard (yellow or dijon)
• Liquid smoke (optional)
• Cayenne pepper (optional)

Alternative and Additional Ingredients

There are many other ingredients you might want to try. Here are some that I’ve added in the past:

• Worcestershire sauce
• Hot sauce (for a little kick)
• Tomato sauce (instead of ketchup)
• Tomato paste
• Maple syrup
• Blackstrap molasses (for a deep, rich flavor)
• Yellow mustard
• Dry mustard (or ground mustard)
• Red wine vinegar
• Lemon juice
• Red pepper flakes
• Black pepper

Feel free to experiment with other ingredients if you want. Look around in your pantry and fridge, and test anything that looks like it might work. Even pizza sauce can be a good ingredient.

How to Make Homemade Barbecue Sauce

As soon as you have all your ingredients gathered, it’s time to get started. First, combine all of the ingredients in a medium saucepan.

Stir until everything is well mixed. Start out on medium-high heat, until the mixture begins to bubble. Secondly, turn the burner on medium-low and heat the mixture for 10 minutes. Stir several times to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

After the mixture has heated up enough for the flavors to blend, give it a taste. Adjust the ingredients (add more of what you like) if it isn’t the way you want it.

This is when I often spoon half of the mixture into another pan to add a different seasoning. Make sure you only add a tiny amount at a time, or you might wind up overdoing it.

Types of Barbecue Sauce

Each region seems to have a favorite type of sauce. Pick the one you prefer. Or you can mix them up to create your own.

Since different regions have different types of barbecue sauce, they each have their own specific ingredients. My husband and one of my sons-in-law prefers the Carolina BBQ sauce that tends to be vinegar based. I enjoy more of a Texas style BBQ sauce that has a smoky flavor with a little heat … or maybe a lot, depending on my mood.

Regardless of the region you prefer, you can still alter the recipe to suit your personal taste. So while you’re looking over the ingredients list and recipe, decide whether to follow it as-is or crank up a flavor you particularly like.

The sauce I made this time leans a little bit sweet, a little bit smoky, and a little bit hot. That’s because I was making it to put on chicken. And that’s how we like our barbecued chicken. I actually increase the heat even more when I’m adding BBQ sauce to chicken wings.

However, when we have beef, especially baked beef ribs, I go heavier on the smoky flavor and heat. And I tone down the sweetness. This is a great recipe that is super easy to tweak according to taste.

Add Flavor to Foods

Whether you’re cooking something from scratch or doctoring up something from the deli, you can use this BBQ sauce to add flavor. For example, any time I pick up a rotisserie chicken or any other already-cooked meat from the grocery store, I like to add something to take the flavor up another notch.

You can’t go wrong with this deliciously spicy, smoky, and sweet barbecue sauce.

Extra Flavor Makes Each Meal Seem Special

We always have the ingredients to make barbecue sauce because we’re big fans of big flavor! It’s so easy to whip up in a few minutes, and it’s totally worth every single ounce of effort!

Please feel free to share!