Barbecue sauces complement any barbecue food and can be easily prepared and made prior to serving your food. Some sauces work better with some meats and poultry than others, but you can be guaranteed that these barbecue sauce recipes will work with near enough anything you partner with.
Don’t forget to send us your favorite recipes too, as we like to try and review them. The best readers BBQ pork recipes are featured, so why not send them in. We have classic sauces from all over the world including some of the barbecue sauce favorites, Chili Salsa, Herb Marinade and a reader favorite, Pineapple Lime Salsa that is fruity and zingy .. a great partner for meats that are big on flavor.
BBQ Sauce Recipes
Barbecue restaurants all have their own recipes for sauce, which are likely secret, kept under lock and key as if the very survival of the business were at stake (or at least its uniqueness). I think the arguments if they really happen, are about regional variations, tastes, and traditions. Tennessee and Kentucky add bourbon to their sauces, vinegar, and pepper with South Carolina BBQ sauce, or mustard in the North, Mexican style salsa in Texas, olive oil and parsley in France, juniper in Scandinavia.
The great American barbecue has by far the most regional variations, the place is so vast and the successive waves of immigrants so many, that this can hardly be a surprise. Yet barbecue sauce recipes are the defining ingredient in most areas.
Try some of our barbecue sauce recipes and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
Types of Barbecue Sauce Recipes
The three main types of barbecue sauce recipes are basting sauces, finishing sauces, and dipping sauces.
A basting sauce or mopping sauce is brushed (or mopped, with a small mop made for the purpose) onto the meat during cooking to add flavor. Pulled pork is a recipe that uses a basting sauce that is mopped or brushed onto the meat at regular intervals through the smoking process. These tend to be vinegar-based sauces that won’t burn if they are cooked for long periods of time.
How to Make a Finishing Sauce
The other type is the finishing sauce. To be fair the basting sauces could be used as finishing sauces as well, but there are specific finishing sauces. These tend to have a hefty quantity of sugar among the ingredients, which will caramelize in a few minutes, or will burn if left to barbecue too long.
Hence the name finishing sauce – you brush it on in the final stages of cooking.
Want to know how to make a BBQ sauce? The following are all Finishing BBQ sauce recipes:
- Bourbon Barbecue Sauce
- Any generic BBQ sauce
- Carolina Gold Sauce
- North Carolina BBQ Sauce
- Kansas City BBQ Sauce
These are only put on the meat after it is actually cooked, but before you take them off the heat. They need just long enough to cook and darken.
For example, this BBQ pork ribs recipe works on this principle.
How to Serve BBQ Finishing Sauce
- Finishing sauces are all served with the meat after it is cooked, but before it is actually served. If you’re grilling this means the final 5 to 10 minutes – if you’re using low indirect heat, this means the last 20 to 30 minutes.
- Heat the sauce in a pan or microwave before you apply it, it sticks to the meat better.
- Many finishing sauces are pretty damn sweet, so go easy with them; too much and the whole thing starts to taste like dessert. One coat should be enough.
- Some people like their sauce to be a little blackened and crispy, which is great if you can get it right – apply it earlier in that case, but only by an extra minute or two. Grills are good for getting this effect, but you risk overcooking – a blow torch is a good way to get the sugar in the sauce to caramelize.
- Serve sauce at the table, your guests can put as much or as little as they like on their meat. If you do this use a different batch of a sauce than the one you brushed on during cooking – this will eliminate the risk of food poisoning from partially cooked meat juices.
Dipping Sauces
Dipping Sauce covers all sorts of condiment sauces from all over the world – Aioli, mayo, ketchup, vinegar, salad dressing, salsa, soy, olive oil, fondue, honey, chutney – you name it, they all count.
serve them at room temperature, but never straight from the refrigerator – they’re too cold and taste just wrong!
They tend to be served on the side of the main dish to literally dip food in, or poured over the top of the food as it is served. You could use finishing sauces for this purpose, just use a separate batch than the one you basted the meat with.
If you want to know how to make BBQ sauce recipes in this style, the following are defined as dipping sauces:
Brand Barbecue Sauces
If you haven’t got the time or inclination to make barbecue sauce recipes from scratch, or want something for the stock cupboard that will keep forever, try a brand made version. BBQ sauces come in all styles and flavors – there are thousands of products to suit all tastes.
Personally I go for any brand that guarantees all ingredients are natural and that it doesn’t contain things like MSG, artificial sweeteners, gluten or corn syrup, etc.
Thus ruling out all the major manufacturers pretty much, but there is a whole cottage industry of BBQ lovers selling their own homemade BBQ sauces.
Our great selection of unique and award-winning sauces and spices will bring out the best in your barbeque cuisine. We have taste-tested and hand-selected only the best sauces and spices, whether you like your barbeque Kansas city style, Memphis style, mustard-based, super sweet or habanero hot, we have something for you.