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Homemade Barbecue Sauce

A thick Kansas City-style sauce built on tomato, molasses and smoked paprika. Twenty minutes on the stovetop and it keeps a month.

Prep
10 min
Cook
25 min
Makes
Makes about 2½ cups (600 ml)
Jump to the recipe
Barbecue-glazed chicken on a board with cups of sauce
Photo: Meraj Kazi / Pexels

Bottled barbecue sauce is mostly high-fructose corn syrup and smoke flavoring. The homemade version costs about a third as much, takes twenty-five minutes of mostly unattended simmering, and lets you decide how sweet it gets — which is the whole argument, because commercial sauces are sweeter than almost anyone actually wants.

This is the Kansas City style: tomato-based, thick enough to cling to a rib, balanced between sweet, sour and smoke. The molasses is not interchangeable with more brown sugar. It brings a bitterness that stops the sauce tasting like ketchup with ambitions, and it is what gives the finished sauce its near-black color.

Simmer it uncovered and low. A lid traps the water you are trying to drive off, and a rolling boil scorches the sugars against the base of the pan — you will smell it before you see it. Twenty-five minutes at a bare bubble reduces it by about a quarter, which is the difference between a sauce that coats and one that runs off.

It is better the next day. The vinegar edge settles and the smoke comes forward. The same is true of beef stew, for the same reason.

Ribs coated in barbecue sauce
Photo: Godwin Torres / Pexels

BBQ sauce, printed

A thick Kansas City-style sauce built on tomato, molasses and smoked paprika. Twenty minutes on the stovetop and it keeps a month.

Twelve store-cupboard things

  • 2 cups (480 ml) passata or tomato paste
  • ½ cup (120 ml) cider vinegar
  • ¼ cup (85 g) molasses
  • ⅓ cup (60 g) dark brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tbsp smoked paprika
  • 2 tsp English mustard powder
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp fine salt
  • ½ tsp cayenne
  • ½ tsp black pepper

Whisk cold, simmer low

  1. 1 Whisk everything together in a heavy saucepan while it is still cold. Doing this off the heat stops the mustard powder and paprika clumping.
  2. 2 Bring it to a bare simmer over medium heat, then drop the heat until it is barely bubbling.
  3. 3 Cook uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring every few minutes and scraping the base. It should reduce by about a quarter and darken noticeably.
  4. 4 Taste and adjust: more vinegar if it is flat, more molasses if it is sharp, more cayenne if it is dull.
  5. 5 Cool completely before bottling. It thickens further as it cools.

Keeping it, and a Carolina variation

  • Keeps a month in a sealed jar in the fridge. The vinegar and sugar do the preserving.
  • For a Carolina-style sauce, double the vinegar and drop the molasses to a tablespoon.
  • Brush it on in the last 10 minutes of grilling, never at the start — the sugar burns long before the meat is done. It is the sauce this site reaches for with air fryer fried chicken.