Jack Daniel’s Original Bbq Sauce
My expectations were so high for Jack Daniel’s original barbecue sauce, and, unfortunately, they weren’t met. The sauce is super sweet and it’s no wonder brown sugar is the first ingredient on the nutrition label, and it also contains traces of pineapple juice which, I can only imagine, amplify the bottle’s aforementioned sweetness. I was hoping for some finger-licking good, southern barbecue sauce, but there isn’t a trace of savory in this sauce, and I missed it. Big time.
Mother Raw Organic Original Bbq Sauce
Mother Raw’s Organic BBQ Sauce is a plant-based batch made from organic date paste, tomato purée, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, minced onion, garlic, and a combination of spices like paprika and gray sea salt. I loved the better-for-you angle the brand was going for and can appreciate the spin on a traditional sauce. However, as far as taste goes, if I didn’t know better, I would have assumed I was taking a spoonful of ketchup.
Hear me out: The sauce has a gentle tomato flavor profile and a somewhat grainy texture at room temperature. In my opinion, it’s a solid healthy alternative to mainstream condiments, but I wouldn’t categorize it as a barbecue sauce, and so it landed itself at number seven.
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Dairy Queen Bbq Sauce
It could be that you’re going for a classic American stereotype and want quantity over quality. Of course, that’s not to say that all Americans really want to dive into a vat of middling barbecue sauce, but that weirdly fits into a narrative, unearned or otherwise.
The point being, if you do secretly want an amount of BBQ sauce approaching surprising portions, you might want to head over to Dairy Queen. With over double the amount offered up by other fast food places, you’ll certainly get a lot of BBQ. But how does it actually taste?
That depends a lot on your own personal preferences. Unlike other barbecue sauces here, Dairy Queen’s version is genuinely pretty different. Careful tasters might observe that, amongst the tanginess and sweet flavors, there’s also hints of more complex flavors. While it doesn’t approach the top of our list, some love it so much that, like , they say it “goes with anything.”
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Why Trust The Spruce Eats
Lindsay Boyers is a certified holistic nutritionist with extensive nutrition knowledge and food and beverage-testing experience. Shes developed over 1,000 original recipes and is constantly on a mission to find the healthiest, best-tasting options and ingredients across all food and drink categories.
White Castle Bbq Sauce
White Castle has plenty of fans, and for good reason. A variety of items on this fast food chain’s menu are genuinely tasty, especially those mouthwatering crinkle-cut fries. After all, if a film franchise like Harold & Kumar can inspire people of all stripes to make a pilgrimage to their local White Castle, then surely there’s something there to draw them in.
Alas, it’s not the barbecue sauce. If you are in a state like good old Kumar or Harold, perhaps the taste of the BBQ won’t matter so much after the wonders of your journey to get some burgers. For the rest of us, however, the sauce tastes artificial. It’s got a lot of flavor, to be sure, but none of the nuanced tang or smokiness seen in far better versions of the condiment. If you’re going to make a trip to White Castle, all the power to you, but consider reaching for a different dipping sauce when you get your hands on those delicious fries or the classic square sliders. The Zesty Zing sauce is probably the best of the bunch, assuming you’re a fan of horseradish. The BBQ sauce, however, deserves little more than a single taste and then a quiet trip to the bottom of the bag.
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Ways To Use Bbq Sauce:
There are so many great ways to put a batch of homemade BBQ sauce to delicious use! Some of our faves include:
- Traditional bbq meat: Grilled or pulled chicken, pulled pork, ribs, burnt ends, etc.
- Baked beans: BBQ sauce is a simple and delicious way to flavor a batch of baked beans.
- Burgers: Use it as a spread on your favorite burgers.
- Pizzas: Use it in place of pizza sauce.
- Soups/salads: Mix it into broths to flavor soups, or use the sauce as a dressing for your salad.
- Tacos/quesadillas/burritos: BBQ sauce is a great way to give your favorite Mexican dishes a different twist.
- Dipping sauce: And of course, its always a great dipping sauce for everything from chicken nuggets to veggie sticks to cocktail meatballs and more!
Shake Shack Bbq Sauce
At this point, you may be wondering if there’s anything new under the barbecue-drenched sun. Each BBQ sauce seems to think that it’s really, truly groundbreaking, when really, it’s just another sweet, smokey goop that tastes pretty good on chicken. That leaves us quibbling over ingredients like vinegar, cayenne, pepper, and tomatoes, to name just a few. To be sure, a truly masterful barbecue sauce creator can take those seemingly simple parts and blend them into something magical, but you may not always find something like that in a fast food place.
If you’re still craving novelty, then the BBQ sauce on deck at Shake Shack is pretty distinct. Somewhere along the way, someone decided to add mustard to their mix. It’s there in such quantities that you can taste it pretty easily. It goes beyond mere pepper or vinegar to something with, well, a lot of mustard flavor. For some tasters, that’s going to be way harsh. For others, it’s the perfect accompaniment to the bolder menu items available at Shake Shack.
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Sweet Baby Ray’s Original Bbq Sauce
A bottled BBQ sauce that makes cameos in grocery stores throughout the United States, Sweet Baby Ray’s enjoys cult-classic status among barbecue fans thanks to its surprisingly complex blend of flavors and rich texture. Sweet Baby Ray’s “Original” formula abides by the Kansas City style of barbecue sauce, with an undercurrent of warm, toasty sweetness thanks to molasses. Slightly tangy tomato paste mingles with garlic, mustard seed, and herbaceous celery seed, and a hint of pineapple juice lends brightness. The sauce has a rich texture that works well for on-the-grill glazing or post-grill dipping, and is especially tasty on pork ribs or pulled pork! Overall, Sweet Baby Ray’s is a BBQ sauce that appeals to just about everyone, and its wide distribution and gentle price point make it satisfying and accessible.
What Makes The Best Barbecue Sauce
While sampling all these sauces , our Test Kitchen kept these qualities in mind:
- Flavor: While there are lots of variations on barbecue sauce, a good all-purpose sauce should be tangy, a bit sweet and taste good enough to lick off your fingers.
- Texture: A good barbecue sauce should be smooth and thick enough to coat everything from ribs to grilled chicken. It shouldnt be overly sticky or gooey.
- Appearance: How does the sauce look? Does it look like something delicious enought to put on your pulled pork sandwich?
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Favorite Ways To Use Bbq Sauce
- Traditional BBQ Meat: Use on ribs, pork, chicken, brisket, burnt end, etc.
- Pulled Pork or Jackfruit: This homemade barbecue sauce recipe is vegan and is perfect if you want to make pulled jackfruit tacos for meatless Monday.
- Chicken: Use this barbecue sauce to make BBQ Chicken. Or as a spread on your crispy chicken breast.
- Burgers: Barbecue sauce on a perfectly cooked burger is the best, especially these spicy Habanero Bison Burgers!
- Meatballs: Coat your baked meatballs in this glorious barbecue sauce to take them up a notch!
- Dipping Sauce: Use as a dip for crispy fries, like these Accordion Potato Fries and Crispy Baked Sweet Potato Fries.
The best part about this barbecue sauce recipe is that you can use it for any recipe that requires premade barbecue sauce!
How Can You Thicken Barbecue Sauce
You can thicken your barbecue sauce the same way youd thicken other dishes. One option is to reduce itsimply heating it up on the stovetop and simmering it so excess water evaporates and the sauce thickens. Alternatively, if you have cornstarch on hand, you can combine cornstarch and water to make a slurry, and add that to your sauce.
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Whataburger Honey Bbq Sauce
Don’t you love tomatoes? If you’re turning your nose up at this member of the nightshade family, you should really reconsider. If you’ve only ever had a mealy grocery store fruit or even just ketchup, it doesn’t quite get at the rich, fruity, savory flavor of the tomato. To be fair, Scientific American can back you up by indicating that there may be a genetic factor influencing your taste. That said, there’s really something lovely about a well-made, tomato-heavy barbecue sauce that you should try at least once.
If you don’t feel like agonizing over what’s on the shelf at your grocery store and you’re not quite ready to make your own, the barbecue sauce from Whataburger is a pretty decent fast food alternative. Its Honey BBQ sauce is full of good tomato flavor. Since it’s paired up with honey, this sauce can get pretty sweet, but that’s no obstacle for many people. Plus, if you’re lucky enough to live near an H-E-B grocery store in Texas, you can snag a whole bottle for yourself, according to .
How To Make Bbq Sauce:
This bbq sauce recipe couldnt be easier to make! Simply
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Fiorella’s Jack Stack Original Kansas City Bbq Sauce
Kansas City-style BBQ sauces are a popular sight on grocery store shelves throughout the United States. Their sweet-and-sour flavor appeals to a big percentage of American consumers, and it’s easy to keep them shelf-stable. A Kansas City sauce with serious KC cred, Fiorella’s Jack Stack Original BBQ Sauce is produced by the Fiorella family, who’ve been cooking up Kansas City BBQ since the 1950s and currently operate six BBQ joints in the Kansas City area. Their original sauce achieves a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness there’s plenty of zippy, vinegary acidity, but the molasses keeps it anchored. A current of smokiness weaves through the entire flavor profile, making this sauce a fitting partner for smoked ribs, burnt ends, baked beans, and other BBQ favorites.
Does Barbecue Sauce Need To Be Refrigerated
From a food-safety standpoint, its not necessary, but to help maintain the quality, its best to keep it cold. According to foodsafety.gov, Refrigeration ensures that commercial sauces and condiments stay fresh for a longer period of time. Shelf-stable commercial barbecue sauce is safe when stored at room temperature after opening. Quality, not safety, is the reason the labels on these products suggest that they be refrigerated after opening.
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Making Homemade Barbecue Sauce Is Super Easy
Sure, store-bought barbecue sauce is alright, and 3-ingredient barbecue sauce sounds good, but is it?!? I know many people make their barbecue sauce with ketchup, but thats not what we do over here! You know why?! Because I like to know EXACTLY what goes into my homemade sauce no extra additives and preservatives from prepackaged ingredients.
This barbecue sauce is thick, tangy, smoky, sweet, and MADE COMPLETELY FROM SCRATCH! Yes, I repeat: This is a homemade barbecue sauce without ketchup! .
Guy Fieri’s Kansas City Smoky & Sweet Barbecue Sauce
Guy Fieri’s Kansas City Smoky & Sweet Barbecue Sauce is your one-way ticket to Flavortown in a bottle. Not only was the Food Network star’s sauce the darkest on my plate, but it was also the most flavorful. Somehow the food personality figured out a way to strike the perfect balance of sweet and smoky in a one-stop-sauce you can dip in, marinade with, and drizzle over meats and veggies alike. Buy this one in bulk, folks, because you’re going to want to put this shiz on everything.
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What To Make With Barbecue Sauce
It might be a silly question to ask what to make with barbecue sauce. The obvious answer is barbecue! But theres a lot more to the condiment than just grilling. A good bottle of BBQ can make for some tasty slow cooker meals, like pulled pork. For a quick appetizer, just toss some meatballs in your slow cooker with some barbecue sauce and watch as your guests gobble them down. Better yet, check out our 50+ recipes that call for our best sauce.
Finding The Best Barbecue Sauce For Your Grill
Claire Krieger/Taste of Home
Whether your grilling, slow cooking or just adding a bit of kick to your bag lunches, the right barbecue sauce is essential for country-style dishes. If you manage to find the right onethe kind with the right amount of sweetness, tang, smokiness and powerful flavoryoure set. But have you been to the grocery store lately? There are more barbecue sauces than you could ever imagine. Dont waste your time trying bottle after bottle of OK saucerely on our Test Kitchen who put 10 big names to the test.
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Kfc Summertime Bbq Sauce
Without becoming too much of a smart aleck, one wonders if a summertime barbecue sauce has a wintertime equivalent. KFC hasn’t debuted any such special sauce, though we’ll be sure to check it out if it ever makes it to the real world.
Until then, we’ll have to be content with the restaurant’s Summertime BBQ sauce, which isn’t such a bad consolation prize. It’s still not clear what makes it a seasonal sauce other than the fact that barbecues tend to happen more frequently in the summer than winter, but only if you’re a quitter.
Anyway, KFC’s BBQ sauce has a decent variety of flavors, with a pretty standard smokiness and an interesting bit of heat that’s missing from sweeter sauces. Overall, it’s a bit bolder than other fast food barbecue sauces, but not so outstanding or interesting that you’ll really take notice. It’s vaguely interesting and largely inoffensive.
What Is Barbecue Sauce Made Of
There are so many barbecue sauces out there from which to choose, and the ingredients vary greatly based on the type of sauce and where its from. But there are some ingredients that are pretty classically in most barbecue sauces youll find. These include ingredients like: ketchup, vinegar, tomatoes, worcestershire sauce, salt/pepper, hot sauce, and sugar.
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Two Flavors Of Organic Bbq Sauces In One Combo
Good Food For Good’s organic ‘BBQ Box’ pantry pack includes no added sugar barbecue sauces in two flavors – Classic and Sweet & Spicy – making it a perfect condiment for your BBQ cravings. Our vegan-friendly bbq sauces are made without any added refined sugar and sweetened only with dates!
- Set of 4, 270 g/ 9.5 Oz each jar
- 2 Organic Classic BBQ Sauce and 2 Organic Sweet & Spicy BBQ Sauce
- 2g of natural sugar vs. 8-16g in traditional bbq sauces, per tbsp
- No added sugar, all-natural and certified organic ingredients
- Plant-based and Vegan-friendly
- Whole30 Approved, Keto and Paleo-friendly
- Free of gluten, dairy, soy, nuts or corn syrup
- No preservatives, no additives or artificial flavors
- Made in Canada
- BIPOC woman-owned
Arby’s Tangy Bbq Sauce
Arby’s has become famous partially because it rode to public recognition on the back of its sauces. Weird image, to be sure, but there are plenty of people that are willing to forge ahead because they just love that weirdly neon yellow cheese sauce slathered all over their roast beef sandwiches. Maybe you should just enjoy the experience of whatever that is without asking too many questions. Plenty of other fast food fanatics also dig Arby’s creamy horsey sauce, a horseradish-based potion that brings the burn to whatever you’re eating and has earned devotees nationwide.
How does Arby’s Tangy BBQ sauce hold up to its more well-known companions? Not too bad. True to its name, the sauce is pretty tangy, not unlike the traditional Kansas City BBQ sauce that leans pretty heavily on ketchup and molasses. While the slightly grainy texture can be a turn-off for some, overall, we think this is a fantastic sauce.
Perhaps that explains to the sauce: “Roast Beef sandwich with BBQ sauce from Arby’s smacks!! Try one and y’all see!! That’s the only way I’m eating Arby’s.”
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Cattlemen’scarolina Tangy Goldbbq Sauce
Traditional “Carolina Gold” barbecue sauce includes mustard as its primary ingredient, so it makes sense that French’s® is the brand behind Cattlemen’s®Carolina Tangy Goldâ¢BBQ Sauce, one of the best store-bought versions of this type of sauce. Cattlemen’s Carolina Gold features enough mustard seed to clear your nasal passages, but that sensation is beautifully tempered by sweet molasses, sour apple cider vinegar, and a trace of hickory smoke. Carolina Gold BBQ sauce is traditionally paired with pork, and Cattlemen’s is well-suited to that purpose. We squeezed this sauce on top of pulled pork and were impressed by the way that the spicy, smoky, tangy flavors melded with the pork’s savory taste and aroma. That said, Cattlemen’s Carolina Gold has a slightly lighter texture than many other store-bought sauces, so it’s also a great match for more delicate grilled items like fish, chicken, and vegetables.
