How to Create Your Own Barbecue Sauce

Have you been down the aisle in your local grocery store that includes marinades and barbecue sauces? The aisle has seen a large number of additions over the recent years due to the popularity grilling and barbecuing have experienced. If you look closely though you will also see these can quite pricey, anywhere from a couple dollars for generic bland sauces up to $6 for gourmet sauces. Have you ever looked at them and said, "well it sounds good but I wish it had this ingredient in it". Well, there is a solution to help you save money and match your own tastes, create your own barbecue sauce. This article might make it seem a little complicated, but once you get started putting your sauce together you will see how easy and rewarding it truly is.

Every barbacue sauce may start with a base. Most bases are created using ketchup and tomato sauce. You can also spice it up a little by using chili sauce, or if you want to use fresher ingredients you can even start with tomatoes themselves. If you want more of a mustard style barbecue sauce then you will want to use a fair amount of mustard, and of course for carolina barbecue style sauces you will be using a larger amount of vinegar than you usually would in the sauce. Once you have the combination of base ingredients you want, you will then want to consider how sweet you would like to make your sauce.

Sweeteners are used even in the most acidic sauce which is the carolina style barbecue sauces. The question you have to ask yourself is what type of sweetness do you want. Some items you can use are variations of granulated sugar which just add a sweetness, while brown sugar will give it a bit of molasses flavor as well. Of course you could use molasses as an option, but keep in mind this will thicken your sauce significantly. How about a couple other unusual ways to sweeten the sauce such as using syrup or even jelly? By using jelly you can not only sweeten it, but add a fruit flavor at the same time. Of course every good barbecue sauce has a nice contract between sweet and sour.