Back in March 2010, Eric decided to clean up his diet. We were on vacation in Florida when he realized that most of his favourite foods and drinks (such as Coke, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, Ketchup, multigrain bread, etc) contained high fructose corn syrup. We found this odd because the labels in Canada do not list this ingredient on the very same products. After reading up on it, we realized that high fructose corn syrup is often called ‘glucose-fructose’ on Canadian labels. We were shocked.
When we got home from our vacation, we discovered that many of the same cereals, sauces, and dressings in our kitchen contained ‘glucose-fructose’ so we did a pantry overhaul. Since that vacation, not one pop has crossed Eric’s lips and he also gave up his go-to products that contain glucose-fructose. This meant switching to Nature’s Path cereal, organic ketchup, Silverhills Bread, and 100% natural fruit juices, to name a few.
One of the glucose-fructose containing condiments is our beloved BBQ sauce! We use BBQ sauce a lot in the summer to give a little kick to whatever we’re grilling. We recently purchased an ‘all-natural’ BBQ sauce from Whole Foods only to find out that it contained corn syrup and a few other questionable ingredients. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to make some myself.
Before the BBQ on Saturday, I made my first batch of homemade BBQ sauce adapting a recipe from Veganomicon that I saw on Matt’s blog. Any you know what? It really wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The sauce was thrown together in no time. I’ll be making a couple modifications to this recipe next time I make it (I’ll talk about them below), but I think it was a good starting point!
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Homemade BBQ Sauce
Adapted from Veganomicon (recipe found here).
Yield: 2 & 1/4 cups sauce
Ingredients:
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium-sized sweet onion, chopped finely
- 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (less if you don’t like it spicy)
- 22-oz crushed tomatoes (or 28oz can if that’s what you have)
- 1/3 cup blackstrap molasses (see note)
- 1/3 cup white vinegar + 1 tbsp apple cidar vinegar (or just use more white vinegar)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp yellow mustard (Dijon works too)
Directions:
1. In a large saucepan, sauté the onion in oil on medium heat for about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute.
2. Add in the rest of the ingredients except for the mustard and cook for about 30 minutes uncovered over low heat. Stir occasionally and make sure not to burn it.
3. Add the mustard and taste for sweetness/sourness. Add more sugar, salt, vinegar, etc if you think it’s necessary to achieve your desired flavour. Cook for another few minutes.
4. Optional: You may puree the sauce in a blender, but it isn’t necessary. I left mine chunky as I didn’t want to dirty the blender! Makes 2 & 1/4 cups sauce.
Note: I found this sauce to have a fairly pronounced molasses flavour. Next time, I will probably reduce the molasses to 3-4 tbsp and slowly add it in to taste.
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The sauce was much easier to throw together than I thought it would be! You basically just chop the onion and garlic, sauté, and then stir everything in, simmer for 20-30 minutes, and adjust the sauce to taste.
The sauce smells wonderful when it’s cooking in the saucepan. The flavour is quite nice, however I found the molasses flavour to be more pronounced than I prefer, so next time I will reduce the molasses to 3-4 tbsp. Other than that I loved it. The original recipe also called for 2 tsp liquid smoke, which I didn’t have, so you can always add that in if you prefer!
I’m not sure how long it keeps for in the fridge, so I decided to freeze half the batch. Hopefully it freezes ok.
Yesterday, we used some of the leftover sauce and made up some yummy BBQ lentil sandwiches for lunch!
The sandwiches contained:
- Silverhills sprouted grain bread
- hummus
- lentils + bbq sauce, heated up
- grilled red onion and yellow peppers
- tomato slices
- spinach
- Cucumber
- S & P
They were glorious. And messy. ;)
In other news…it’s June 6th which means…
Happy Birthday to my Sister, Kristi!
I’m looking forward to the 3rd week in July when Kristi, Pete, and my nephews come to stay with us for a week! Kerrie and fam are also staying here for a weekend during Kristi’s stay…it’s going to be a good time! I better start planning some kid-friendly meals. ;) Any ideas?
Also, Happy Anniversary to my loving in-laws, Ken and Margaret! 
I looove BBQ sauce! I will definitely be trying this recipe!
The penny pincher in me wants to use up the BBQ collection we have acquired first… buuuut the second its gone i’m ALL OVER this recipe! <3 Happy anniversary to your in-laws! <3
I cant wait to try this. My partner loves bbq sauce and will put it on anything but as we have significantly reduced our packet food consumption its the one thing i cant take away from him lol. I will have to make a batch and surprise him with it (thats if i dont eat it all first) and hopefully he will give up the store bought one. Do you have a recipe for tomato ketchup? Thanks for another great recipe!
oooh I love homemade BBQ sauce!
Looks wonderful! I used Balckdtrap in the Pulled Jackfruit BBQ I just made and it added a great depth of flavor. :)
Thank you for this post. My eight year old daughter loves BBQ sauce on everything and I have a hard time finding a healthy one. This is perfect and sounds easy to make.
I made this after reading it on Matt’s blog. I didn’t use molasses (used brown sugar) and ended up throwing pinto beans in it-it makes delicious baked beans!
yum!
So perfect for summer! I’m loving that first photo :)
<3 BBQ sauce! Very excited to make this sometime. It's really a shame how corn syrup is in pretty much eeverrrythinggg.
Kids are happiest, and eat the most, when they are part of the prep and decision making.
My kids are teens now and still like to have choices. A couple favs for summer ~ taco salads (no meat necessary!) and grilled mini pizzas.
Hi Angela,
This looks delish! I love the idea of making your own BBQ sauce. Personally, I find too much sodium leaves me with a bad belly :( so I’ve actually experimented with a few homemade BBQ sauces of my own! I’ll be giving this one next time for sure. Who knows, maybe it will be my new favourite ohsheglows recipe… right now it’s a toss up between mushroom spinach onion tart and flourless double chocolate cookies, there tough one’s to beat :)!
omg glucose-fructose and high fructose corn syrup is the same thing?! good thing i know now! i read michael pollens book last summer and seeing high fructose corn syrup in the ingredient list is always a red flag for me now
That sandwich bread is perfectly shaped and the whole sandwich looks to die for. I miss real bread!! Too funny, I just made homemade BBQ sauce for the first time, the other day too! I used a recipe from Clean Start. It was deeelish! Hope you’re having a great Monday!
This post has really pushed to look at the labels of the vegan but still not very healthy things I occasionally eat, like Oreos and Special K cereal. I’m definitely going to make a conscious effort to really avoid things with ingredients that sound like science ingredients!
And by ingredients, I mean experiments :).
hi angela!
if you’re looking for a delicious bbq sauce that has no high fructose corn syrup or weird ingredients i know a great sauce! it’s called bone suckin’ sauce, and i find it at my local whole foods. it’s SO GOOD–not even exaggerating. here is more about it: http://www.buybonesuckin.com/products/Bone-Suckin%27-Sauce-16-oz.html
and your recipes are amazing! ive made quite a couple already on my blog, but you are always mentioned as the owner of the recipe :)
Thanks Liz!
OMG, thank you so much for posting this recipe! We’ve been going without BBQ sauce this spring/summer because I REFUSE to buy any kind that has HFCS in it. So Woohoo!! My husband likes anything that I make homemade better than store bought anyways ;).
I literally got online tonight to check for clean BBQ sauce – boy am I glad I got side-tracked and read some blogs in my dashboard first! Thank you SO much for posting this!!!!! :)
Nice! :)
My favorite barbecue sauce is Bone Suckin’ Sauce – although making my own homemade doesn’t look hard!
Thanks Angela for the best wishes for our Anniversary.
We just got home from dinner and celebrating 41 Years of
Wedded Bliss. Thanks again to you and Eric for your best wishes.
I liked the photo you posted of us. MY 4 FAVORITE GUYS.
Tell Kristie Happy Birthday from us also.
MIL
Thank you, Margaret! Happy Anniversary to you and Ken! :)
Kristi
Those lentil sandwiches look delicious! I absolutely love lentils, probably more than other beans. They are so freaking good. And on a sandwich like that I never thought of! I am definitely going to try out the recipe. Thanks :)