The main ingredient in barbecue sauce—which we shall henceforth refer to by its street name, “BBQ sauce”—depends on the type of sauce you’re making: Kansas City-style? North Carolina-style? Do you want South Carolina barbecue flavor or Texas/Southwest sauce? Different styles of BBQ sauce start with different base ingredients. Alabama even invented a mayonnaise-based BBQ sauce in the 1920s—that’s all we’re going to say about that.
Each main ingredient gets spiced up with a bunch of different herbs, seasonings, and sometimes even a little booze (whiskey sauce, anyone?). Let’s dig into the various flavor components of our favorite meat-marinating and fried-food-dipping condiment to explore what makes BBQ sauce so dang delicious.
There are many different regional styles of barbecue. While many homemade barbecue sauce recipes include tomatoes, some regions of the United States do not have tomatoes in their sauces. For example, white barbecue sauce does not use tomatoes.
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Main ingredients that give BBQ sauce its flavor
We’ve given you the BBQ sauce 101, but if you love cookouts like we love cookouts, you’ve probably experienced plenty of fusion sauces that mix up vinegars, ketchup, tomato paste, and mustards with spices and flavorings to create scrumptious concoctions for whatever is going on the grill. The main ingredients that give most BBQ sauces their signature flavor include:
- Apple cider vinegar. A solid start for a thin sauce that packs a nice zing.
- Yellow mustard. Gives BBQ sauces a tasty tanginess that complements smoked meats.
- Ketchup/tomato paste. Makes a thick, tomatoey base that a lot of people love.
- Spices and sweeteners. Salt, cumin, peppers, honey, molasses, brown sugar, liquid smoke, Worcestershire, garlic, onions, cayenne…the list of ingredients that help fill out the flavor goes on and on.
For us, the main ingredients are only the starting point. The real fun starts when you begin to mix in the unexpected to create a fruity BBQ sauce or tongue-torching habanero sauce to give your hot dogs meaning.
What is the base for BBQ sauce?
You’ve got three main bases for any BBQ sauce worthy of the name: vinegar, mustard, or tomato. The base ingredient gives the BBQ sauce its texture and the main bulk of the flavor. Vinegar bases came out of Eastern NC, mustards from SC and Western NC, and tomato gets credited to Kansas City sticky sauces (think ribs—mmmmmm, ribs), although SC invented their own versions of light- and heavy-tomato based BBQ sauces as well. Texas and the Southwest also generally stick to a tomato base (with vinegar as well as meat drippings, onions, peppers, and garlic). Louisiana, as always, does whatever the hell it wants, so you might get a tomato base or you might get a vinegar base. Just enjoy that barbecued gator tail and don’t worry about it. A breakdown of the various BBQ sauce bases is as follows:
You can get an outstanding two- or three-ingredient BBQ sauce with a vinegar base. Most of these rely on apple cider vinegar and crushed red peppers for the main flavor, plus salt because salt makes pretty much any food taste amazing.
For zip and tang, mustard-based sauces deliver. A typical South Carolina mustard sauce includes a smoky flavoring like Worcestershire, plus something sweet like honey to balance it all out to lip-smacking deliciousness.
This is the most ubiquitous version of the sauce, commonly distributed in those tiny packets at fast food joints nationwide. While tomato-based BBQ sauces were around in the 1800s like their vinegar- and mustard-based brethren, it wasn’t until Kansas City’s ketchup-tomato-molasses-brown sugar mixture turned tomato-based BBQ sauces into a favorite from coast to coast.
The BEST BBQ sauce from scratch (Tomato base)
FAQ
What is the most common ingredient in BBQ sauce?
What are the 4 types of BBQ sauce?
What makes Carolina BBQ sauce different?
What is the difference between Kansas City BBQ and St Louis BBQ?
What is fresh tomato barbecue sauce?
Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce begins it’s journey starting from garden vine-ripe tomatoes and ends up saucing your favorite grilled barbecue. Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce is my recipe of the day. I enjoy making bbq sauce from scratch from various starting points–> ketchup to tomato sauce all the way down to fresh ripe garden tomatoes.
Is tomato sauce healthy?
Ready-made tomato sauces are not very healthy, as they have many food additives and can often contain crushed insects in the middle. Preferably homemade sauces.
Can you use tomato sauce on a barbecue?
Tomato-based sauces should never be used during grilling. The natural sugars will caramelize and burn the surface of the meat at high temperatures. Sugars burn at temperatures well above the ideal smoking temperature so you can slather on sugar-based sauces to your barbecue as long as you keep the temperature below 265 F (130 C).
Can you make tomato free BBQ sauce?
No matter if you are allergic to tomatoes or avoiding nightshades, you will love how easy it is to make this tomato free BBQ sauce. It works in all your favorite cookout recipes including on chicken, ribs, on the grill, in the oven, and even as a dipping sauce.