Barbecue sauce is easy. Just slather it on your favorite cut of meat after you're done
with the grilling or smoking and you're good to go. Right? Not so fast. There are plenty
of mistakes you can make when grilling with barbecue sauces. Fortunately, they are all
easy to avoid.
All barbecue sauces are not the same, and if you consider yourself a barbecue connoisseur
you likely already know this. The barbecue sauce served alongside your favorite smoked
meats in the Carolinas, for example, is quite different from the sauce you'll find in Texas,
which is equally different from the sauce you'll find in Kansas City.
And, just like different wines and beers pair best with certain foods, so do different barbecue
sauces pair best with certain types of meat. It all comes down to the base ingredients.
According to Adam's Taphouse Grille, a barbecue restaurant known as "the place for ribs" since
it opened in Maryland in 1981, mustard-based barbecue sauces pair best with pork and chicken;
tomato and vinegar-based barbecue sauces pair best with pork ribs and rib tips; vinegar-based
barbecue sauces pair best with whole hog or pork shoulder; and tomato and sugar-based
barbecue sauces pair best with high-fat meats, like ribs and brisket.
So, the next time you pull a bottle of barbecue sauce out of the fridge, opt for the style
of barbecue sauce that best fits the cut of meat you're cooking up.
"Let me get one."
"Right on. One order."
"One order of ribs!"
"No, no. No no. One rib."
If you think that the more barbecue sauce you use, the better, you might want to rethink
your strategy. While you may love the tangy taste of your favorite BBQ sauce, smothering
your meat in it isn't always the best choice.
According to Jake's Famous Foods, a brand that offers its own line of barbecue rubs
and sauces, it's tricky business determining the right amount of sauce for your meat. Add
too much and you can't taste the meat; add too little and your meat may taste bland.
To help you navigate the challenging meat-to-sauce ratio, Jake's has broken down how much sauce
you need to use for popular barbecued items, based on factors such as cooking temperatures,
cooking time, amount of sugar and water in a sauce, and size of your barbecued item.
Considering all that, Jake's recommends — for the cooking process only, not the post-cooking
dipping at the table — using a quarter-cup of barbecue sauce for items such as steak,
lamb, pork, and burgers; using a half-cup of barbecue sauce for items such as beef roasts,
veal, and whole chickens and turkeys; and using a scant eighth of a cup for items such
as fish and shellfish. This all assumes that your items are "average" size for whatever
it is you're cooking.
These qualities, Jake's says, should imbue your barbecued item with a fair amount of
flavor, without overdoing it. Any extra sauce can be added at the table.
We could say it over and over: barbecue sauce is not the same thing as a marinade — it's
a barbecue myth that just won't go away. When you marinate your foods in barbecue sauce,
you're doing them an injustice. Barbecue sauce should be used as a glaze, added during the
cooking process, not before.
If you marinate your meats in a barbecue sauce, you run the risk of leaving too much of the
sauce on or in the cut of meat, which can lead to the sauce's ingredients, such as sugar,
burning during the cooking process, which in turn leads to a nasty, burnt-sugar flavor.
You should really only add your barbecue sauce to your items during the latter part of the
cooking process. Or you can add it in the beginning of the cooking process if you plan
to only cook your item for less than 20 minutes.
You may have a favorite barbecue sauce brand, but have you ever considered making your own
barbecue sauce at home? Not only can you create a sauce that's perfectly suited to your preferences,
but you can avoid all the sodium and sugar that store-bought sauces contain.
According to research, barbecue sauce is one of the worst foods for your heart health,
due to the average barbecue sauce containing as much as 310 milligrams of sodium per a
small serving of just a few tablespoons.
That means, if you're really heaping on the sauce at your next cookout, you could easily
be meeting or exceeding your recommended 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day, with just your
barbecue sauce.
Additionally, many barbecue sauces contain a hefty helping of high fructose corn syrup,
including popular sauces such as Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce and Sweet Baby Ray's.
How you make your homemade barbecue sauce comes down to personal preference, but most
recipes start with just ketchup, brown sugar, white vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce.
If you're making your own homemade barbecue sauce, good for you. You're already one step
closer to the best barbecue experience possible. However, one area where you could easily go
wrong? Your homemade sauce's consistency.
No one wants a runny barbecue sauce. The best barbecue sauces are just thick enough that
they can be slathered onto a cut of meat or used as a dip, giving you a fair amount of
flavor that sticks around in one place without dripping or sliding right off onto your plate.
Luckily, thickening your runny, homemade barbecue sauce is pretty easy.
According to Better Homes & Gardens, you can thicken up your runny sauces either using
flour or cornstarch. To use flour, just mix two tablespoons of flour with a fourth cup
of cold water — for every cup of sauce you're making — stir that mixture into your sauce,
and then heat it up until the mixture simmers.
Let it simmer for one minute. Thicken your sauce with cornstarch by using one tablespoon
of cornstarch mixed with one tablespoon of cold water for every cup of sauce you're making.
Cook the mixture into your sauce, at a simmer, for two minutes.
Even if you don't want to go the way of homemade barbecue sauce, you can still upgrade your
store-bought barbecue sauce with a little bit of customization — based on its existing
flavor profile, or on your taste preferences.
If your sauce is on the sweeter side, you might want to add some vinegar to your sauce;
rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and red wine vinegar are all viable options to counteract
that too-sweet taste.
If you prefer a little kick of heat to your barbecue sauce, you might just need to add
some of your favorite hot sauce — just be sure to add slowly and taste between additions,
as the heat can add up fast. If your sauce just tastes a little "meh" you can add some
depth of flavor with some extra sauces and seasonings such as mustard, Worcestershire
sauce, garlic powder, or paprika.
We know what you're thinking — if most barbecue sauces err on the side of sweet with all that
high fructose corn syrup, why would you want to add more sweetness to your sauce? But adding
honey to your barbecue sauce, whether homemade or store-bought, can improve both the texture
and the flavor.
Adding honey to a spicier or already flavorful barbecue sauce can help even out those stronger
flavors, while creating a more viscous texture, which also means your barbecue sauce will
be less runny.
If you're making barbecue sauce at home, you can add your honey in place of brown sugar
or another sweetener, such as molasses. Even agave nectar works in the same way, if you
want to add honey to your barbecue sauce, but you're looking for a vegan alternative.
For more thickness and a stronger honey taste, look beyond your standard grocery store honey
and opt for manuka honey, a New Zealand-derived variety that's not only tasty, but also comes
with a host of health benefits.
Once you have your barbecue sauce's texture and flavor just right, no matter if you purchased
it from a store and tweaked it, or you made it from scratch, it's time to add the sauce
to your favorite piece of meat — or your favorite barbecued item in general, because
there's no reason your sauce has to be slathered on a hunk of protein every time.
You're not in the clear yet, though. You want to still take some precautions and avoid a
few common mistakes, like burning your barbecue sauce.
Any time you cook with a sugary sauce, either on the grill or for a long period of time
in your oven, anywhere that there's either high heat or prolonged heat, you can end up
with a black, not-very-tasty food. The sugar in the sauce cooks faster than the food.
Because of this, you want to wait until your food is very nearly done before you add your
barbecue sauce. For particularly sugary or sticky sauces, we recommend waiting until
about the last five minutes of cooking.
"They always like to say, 'fall off the bone.' But actually falling off the bone is overcooked.
If they're falling off the bone it means you cooked 'em too long."
For even better results, you may want to further refine your sauce application according to
the type of meat or other food you're cooking, versus just throwing it on in the last five
minutes.
Chad's BBQ, a restaurant in Maryland, offers a few more specific recommendations. For chicken,
Chad recommends adding the sauce during the final 10 to 15 minutes of cooking, for a tasty,
sticky coating that's not burnt — definitely go with a thick, sticky sauce, too, or it
just won't stay on the chicken.
For beef, though, Chad says you can add the sauce a little earlier, without worrying about
burning; in fact, he adds his sauce before the cooking starts, and then adds extra sauce
every hour. For pork, Chad recommends only applying the sauce after the meat has been
cooked completely.
Cross-contamination is always a worry, no matter what you're cooking, but it can be
easy to accidentally cross-contaminate while grilling, especially if you're grilling with
barbecue sauce.
You brush some barbecue sauce or a marinade onto your raw chicken using a barbecue brush;
you place the brush that's touched the chicken back into your sauce bowl; then, once the
chicken is done, you reach for that same brush to give it another coating. You take the bowl
to the kitchen and use another utensil to serve sauce to your guests. It's a food poisoning
outbreak waiting to happen.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends separating the sauce you plan on
using for raw meat from the sauce you plan on using for cooked meat, so that you can
throw out any barbecue sauce that's come in contact with either raw meat or a utensil
that's touched raw meat. And don't use the same utensils all throughout the cooking and
then serving process.
If you've done a great job of keeping your barbecue sauce free from cross-contamination,
you may feel a little regret as you toss that leftover goodness into your trash bin after
a grill session.
But hold it right there.
Even if you don't plan on grilling or barbecuing in the near future, there's no reason to throw
out your leftover uncontaminated barbecue sauce. Keep it on hand and use it for other
dishes or even as a dipping sauce for fries and veggies.
Real Simple suggests using your leftover barbecue sauce, either store-bought or homemade, as
a zesty addition to your pizza, potato salad, or even hot dogs. You can also start making
barbecued versions of favorite foods that you might not normally barbecue, such as barbecue
tofu or barbecued sweet potato. You can even adjust your barbecue sauce's flavor profile
to turn it into a completely new sauce, such as a shrimp cocktail sauce.
While you should do all you can to save your leftover barbecue sauce if it's newly made
or a fresh bottle, there comes a point where you have no other choice than to toss out
that nasty old barbecue bottle that's been sitting in the back of the fridge. So how
old is too old when it comes to barbecue sauce?
According to Still Tasty, you can keep store-bought, bottled barbecue sauce, like Stubb's, open
in the pantry for a month, for best quality — but in the refrigerator, the open bottle
will stay fresh for up to nine months.
Even after this length of time, though, your barbecue sauce will still be safe to eat.
Signs that it's gone bad and could be unsafe to consume include an abnormal odor, darker-than-normal
color, or the presence of mold. If you do work up the nerve to try your old barbecue
sauce, the taste should also give you a hint as to whether or not the sauce is safe.
"Barbecue sauce."
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