Help me tweak my BBQ sauce recipe

Cafe Society
1

I am going to a friends this weekend to drink beer and cook dead animal parts over burning dead plant parts and I have decided to create my very own special BBQ sauce from scratch. I have never made my own BBQ sauce before, however I have a good feeling about the proto-recipe I have put together

1 1/2 cups tomato paste
~1 cup coffee
1 med onion, roasted
1 head garlic, raosted
1-2 chile peppers, deseeded and roasted
~1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
~1/2 cup molases
~3 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
~3 tbsp. Cocoa powder
~2 tsp. tumeric
~1 tsp. salt

Combine all ingredients and simmer for a few hours, strain and slather on meat on fire.

So dopers, does this look like a decent recipe to you? Do my proportions seem correct? Am I missing something important? Do I perhaps have too many strong flavors? Any suggestions on which kind of onion/pepper/coffee would blend well with the recipe? Am I crazy for even thinking about putting cocoa powder in my sauce? If not, would bakers chocolate be even better? What should I name my creation? Am I going to spend like $30 and 3 hours making something that tastes like a bottle of Hunts? Will this be versitile enough for all the different dead animal parts I’m likely to encounter? Will everyone be impressed with my culinary skills? Will I be worshiped as a god by the indegenous tribes of my friends neighborhood? Will this sauce get me laid?

Ok, I’ll shut up now.

Jack

2

Looks like a lot of tomato paste. Are you sure you don’t mean tomato sauce?

Regardless, the first thing I would do would probably be to replace the tomato paste with ketchup. I know it seems like a cop-out, but I’ve seem quite a few BBQ sauces that use ketchup as a base.

I’d probably also leave out the coffee and the cocoa. I like the apple cider vinegar and either molasses or corn syrup or brown sugar for sweetness.

Also, if you’re using garlic & onions, I’d saute them, not roast them. Also, I’d puree it, not strain it.

That said, I’d probably use onion powder and garlic powder instead of an onion and garlic. I’d probably also use cayenne pepper for heat, although pureeing some chile peppers will work.

You’re missing black pepper. Don’t let the turmeric get out of control.

You don’t need to simmer for a few hours.

That’s about all I can offer. Every time I make BBQ sauce it comes out different. I don’t really have a set recipe. Sometimes, I’ll put in a little orange juice, maybe some whiskey or beer. I like it vinegary, but some people don’t.

3

I think you need to add a little liquid smoke, black pepper and cumin. Ketchup based sauces burn easy because of the sugars, so if you use a ketchup based sauce, don’t put it on the food until the last 10 minutes or so. If you stick with the tomato paste/sauce you can apply it earlier and give it more of a chance to absorb the flavor without burning the outside. Don’t forget that the molassas is sugar too.

4

a friend of mine that makes excellent BBQ sauce swears that honey is the key ingredient… bastard wont tell me how much honey, tho :mad:

5

I like the coffee and cocoa idea. Should add a very nice flavor. I once had some chili that used coffee and cocoa and while you couldn’t really taste either one the addition gave the chili a very interesting quality.

Have you thought about experimenting with a mustard based BBQ sauce? My former in-laws used to make one that was just amazing. Good enough to be used as a condiment on just about everything.

Let us know how it turns out.

6

Honey does help balance the acidity. As for how much? You got a tongue don’t you? Taste your sauce!

Personally, I shy away from the sweeter barbecue sauces. I like mine all vinegary Carolina-style. Lots of apple cider vinegar, mustard, some hot pepper flakes, some hot sauce, and that’s it.

With your sauce, I would definitely replace the tomato paste with ketchup. Now, mind you, I’m generally against all things ketchup, but in a BBQ sauce it’s one of several perfect bases.

Cocoa AND coffee? Are you going for overkill here? It does sound interesting, but I’m skeptical. I’ve used both ingredients in chili, so I don’t inherently find them a weird combo. I could see both ingredients working, but 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder seems like a heck of a whole lot; so does a cup of coffee (depending on how strong it is).

I’m also unsure why you would want to add turmeric to the sauce.

What I would do is start by making the sauce sans cocoa and coffee. Keep the turmeric if you really want it. Then gradually add your coffee and cocoa and see how it affects the flavor of your sauce. I believe in keeping BBQ sauces simple and letting the flavor come from the meat itself. The hallmark of good BBQ meat is that it does not require sauce. However, sauce is always a welcome accent.

7

Lots of good ingredients there, but maybe too many for a single sauce. Try thinking how the flavours might go together.

For richness you have coffee coco molasis and wostershire sauce

now coffe and coco go (think moccachino etc.)
coco and molasis go (think rich chocolate cakes)
molasis and wostershire sauce go (think rich sweet and sour flavours)
but I’m not sure how well any other pairs of flavour go molassis and coffee = verry sweet ritch coffee (arabic coffee like maybe but do you want an arabic coffee bbq sauce, it is possible could be great but would be strange) wostershire sauce with coffee or coco just doesn’t work I don’t think.

So chose 2 or three that each ingredient goes with at leat one other ingredient.

Now you have chosen a basis for the sauce. For this example I’ll choose the strangest to explain how to think about the flavours

coffee-molasis-wostershire sauce

Now coffee-molassis like Arabic coffee, Wostershire sauce is an English sauce but based on Indian spices. This means we are in the near to far-east for flavours.
If you like curry you can go towards a curry flavoured sauce, but lets consider more of a standard bbq sauce. Tomatoes are needed either paste tomatoes (that add no sweetness or vinegar) or tomatoe sauce (addss vinegar and sweetness)

With molassis allready being used, I’d guess on using the less sweet tomatoes and making up for the lack of vinegar by adding my own vinegar.

So add tomatoe paste, and a vinegar. Want the vinegar to not be overpowering so wine or cider vinegar is perfect.
Now consider spices/ flavours
Onion and Garlic are allmost allways needed. Garlic is more earthy than onion and we allready have quite a lot of earthy flavour from the coffee so maybe two onions and a small head of garlic.
Arabic coffee goes with ‘warm’ spices (cardomom or cinamon or cloves or ginger) if you have it cardomom seeds would be most authentic, but whichever you use don’t use too much. The idea is still to taste coffee molasis and wostershire sauce when finished.
Add a few favourite other flavourings, maybe some orange peel, cilantro, …
Consider the heat you want, I guess you want quite a mild heat so two chillis deseeded and roasted sounds fine, or just a dash of hot sauce.

Now if you can make up an experimental small batch and use a day or so in advance to help decide quite how much of each main ingredient you think would make a ballanced flavour. Then make up the main batch and give it at least a few hours in the fridge undercover for the flavours to mix and mature before using.

This isn’t intended to be a recipe for you to chose, just a message on how to think about flavours. Think of flavours going with other flavours that go with other flavours. A completely different direction to go might have been coco coffee then add rum or brandy (that goes with both) and chipolte chilli to make a very smokey flavoured bbq. Or molassis and wostershire sauce, add sliced pickled jalapenos, honey cider vinegar ginger pinaple for a Hawain/sweet and sour style.

8

What you have there isn’t all that far from Jake’s Three C’s Barbecue Sauce (Cherries, Chilies, and Cocoa powder).

9

Personally, I would add a bit o honey.

10

mmmmmmmmm bit-o-honey

11

This seems like way too many ingredients to me, as Bippy noted above. For a finishing sauce, I’d dump the cocoa for sure, add a little honey, as noted, and scratch the turmeric and chili peppers. Instead, get yourself some chipotle powder or smoked paprika and add that. Add some smoke and you have a start.

Of course, good BBQ doesn’t need sauce, but many will argue that point. :smiley:

12

The latest and greatest ingredient in my repertoire is Mae Ploy brand Thai Red Curry Paste. I added a bit to some generic bottled barbecue sauce and used it as a dipping sauce. Intense! Might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it sure does add a certain complexity and a wallop of heat to things. I like it a lot! You might want to try building a BBQ sauce around it?

It’s one of those secret ingredients best employed in BBQ and Hot sauces and the like. People taste it and say, “Wow, that has a really good flavor.” It’s one of those ingredients that if used in proper quantities make a huge but subtle flavor impact. I just made a hot sauce with fresh habaneros, jalapenos, and chili peppers and used the curry paste and fresh pureed and reduced cherry tomatoes as the base. Turned out better than I ever would have expected.

I haven’t tried it yet but I imagine it would also make a great wet rub for BBQ meat and roasts.

13

That is absolutely correct. Even a dry rub is unnecessary if the cue is good enough. If you’re going to have sauce, though, and you decide to use ketchup, think about using blackstrap molasses. This would also assume that you’re not using the baker’s chocolate.

14

[hijack]
Thai Red Curry paste makes everything taste good. :slight_smile: OK, I’m exaggerating, but it’s amazing what some red curry paste, coconut milk, and fish sauce will do to any meat or fish. I made fresh mussels the other day with these three ingredients, and all my friends thought I was a culinary god. Good stuff that curry paste. Fantastic in chicken broth, too. Oh, and a squirt or four of lime goes excellently for that hot & sour flavor.
[/hijack]

I suppose you could use it in a BBQ sauce, but you’re starting to get away from BBQ and moving into some Asian-Southwestern fusion territory if you do so.

15

Yea, definitely sacrilege to the BBQ orthodoxy! But I guarantee, you put a smidge into a BBQ sauce and people would never even know. I mean they’d know, they’d wonder why the sauce has such a deep flavor but they’d never place it.

I used about a quarter of a cup in my hot sauce and you can’t quite place it. The vinegar seems to interact with it in a mysterious way.

16

I do that with Tiger Sauce. Put it in everything, and people can’t quite place the flavor, but they like it!

17

devilsknew, curry makes kids hyperactive! It might not be a documented fact, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence in our house.

18

There are many different types of BBQ sauces. Some are mustardy, some are tomatoey, some are vinegary. You should decide what type of flavor you’re going for and design your recipe around that.

Since you’re inventing a new recipe, you will need to balance the flavors against each other. That means you won’t know what proportions to use until do some taste-testing. Rather than starting by cooking everything together, I would add ingredients a little at a time with frequent tasting until you like how it tastes. I agree with Trunk that you should puree the solid ingredients like the onions, garlic and chiles, but I would do it before adding them to the sauce rather than after (it will be easier to do this if you add a liquid ingredient like vinegar to the blender). That way, you will be able to meaure out the ingredients as you add them, so you can duplicate the recipe later.

Since you’re worried about putting in a lot of work only to get something that tastes like a commercial sauce, I would suggest cutting down on the tomato paste, and don’t use ketchup. Most commercial sauces are ketchup-based.

What type of chiles will you use? I assume they will be fresh, if you plan to roast them. The best way to roast chiles is on a grill or over an open flame - just turn the chiles until the skin is blistered on all sides. You might also want to consider chipotles, which are smoked jalapenos. Chipotles en adobo are smoked jalapenos in a tomato sauce - these are available canned and often make a good addition to BBQ sauce. If you use chipotles, you won’t want to add any liquid smoke.

Your recipe includes both coffee and cocoa. Both of these are bitter - you should be careful not to use too much.

Do you plan to use light or dark (full-flavored) molasses? The dark stuff can be pretty strong, and can overwhelm the other ingredients.

Here’s a recipe I use all the time that doesn’t taste like most bottled sauces:

1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup light molasses
2/3 cup Dijon mustard
5 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. hot pepper sauce (like tobasco)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp liquid smoke

19

So, lil’ ggurl likes Curry? That’s cool. What kind did you guys have?

I think that’s one of the reasons why I like it so much (and hot foods in general). It really does increase my metabolism, I always feel a bit more energized afterwards. I do believe there is scientific evidence for this, maybe related to endorphine release.

Ggurl, you do remember my secret Mayan Method, don’t you?

A little chocolate, lots of chili…and well, you know, other herbs and potions.
:wink:

20

I love Tiger Sauce too, the main flavour is Worstershire Sauce and of course chilli. It is ideal for improving any supermarket readymade meal.