BBQ Sauce Recipe (Texas-Style) - Alyona’s Cooking (2024)

How to make BBQ Sauce to can. This bbq sauce recipe is the best homemade bbq sauce simmered slow on the stove using fresh tomatoes. It’s loaded with black pepper, tangy vinegar, flavorful spices, molasses, and hickory liquid smoke just like our favorite bottle of Texas BBQ sauce! I love to make this recipe for long-term storage and pull out as many as I need throughout the year!

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The best bbq sauce is homemade!Try our other favorite homemade condiments like our Honey Mustard Sauce, Canned Ketchup Recipe (Heinz Copycat),Marinara Sauce, and Pizza Sauce Recipe.

Watch How To Make BBQ Sause:

Barbecue Sauce

Barbecue sauce is not only good for basting or marinating meat we love to cook it with our braised pork ribs or top it over pulled chicken sandwiches! It’s so good as a steak sauce or for dippinggrilled chicken kabobs. Everyone should have this condiment for their cooking!

This is not your boring bland bbq sauce or white bbq sauce made of mayonnaise. Here in Carolina, we like it peppery, smoky, and tangy! This recipe for bbq sauce was adapted to recreate my favorite bbq sauce brands that I buy at Aldi, like Burman’s Texas-style BBQ sauce. It has got to be one of my favorite bbq sauces and is a spot-on copycat to my favorite bottle of sweet and tangy bbq sauce! I have canned batches of this bbq sauce, and this recipe has been tested over and over again for successful results.

The Best BBQ Sauce Base:

The most flavorful base for a classic bbq sauce is a tomato base. Canned tomato paste shortens the simmering time and sometimes prepared ketchup is used instead since it’s plenty seasoned and sweet and tangy, to begin with. I like to make bbq sauce as a way to use up all my fresh tomatoes and the longer simmering time doesn’t bother me a bit. I simply know how good this sauce turns out to be, so, I will happily stock up my pantry shelves with this homemade goodness.

This is an easy bbq sauce using fresh tomatoes, you just cook the tomatoes until they get mushy then puree them right in the pot with a stick blender, no food mill or blanching required! I like to do this with my ketchup recipe too and it blends into a smooth sauce base! Here is how to make a tomato base using fresh tomatoes;

1. Cook quartered tomatoes until they get soft and mushy. They will usually release a lot of tomato juice and the juices should boil.
2. Using a stick blender puree the tomatoes in their juices until smooth.

Note: you could run the blended tomatoes through a mesh sieve to discard any seeds or small skins, a food mill is great for this kind of process. However, I think the hand blender helps thicken the base from all its natural pulp.

What is Texas BBQ Sauce?

Frankly, there are many different regions and types of barbecue sauce. Aldi carries Regional-style bbq sauces in the Kansas City flavor, Memphis-style, Carolina-style bbq sauce, and Texas-style. Each is known for its sweet and tangy flavors, however, traditional texas style barbecue sauce is heavier on spices like cumin, chili powder, black pepper, and lots of onion flavor. The consistency is a little on the thin side but it can still sit on top of the meat.

Hickory Liquid Smoke vs Mesquite

Liquid smoke is a highly concentrated liquid that is condensed from wood to flavor food. It comes in different wood flavorings such as “Mesquite” or “Hickory”. Both have their unique smoky flavor, which I why I like to mix and match. For more of a Sweet Baby Ray’s flavor, add more mesquite or hickory for a Texas-style bbq sauce.

BBQ Sauce Ingredients:

BBQ sauce recipes are mainly vinegar-based. This homemade bbq sauce recipe is ideal for canning although you can easily recalculate it to a smaller portion for refrigeration. Typically, I would use tomato juice from fresh tomatoes, however, you can begin with store-bought tomato juice, tomato sauce, or paste diluted with water as the base.

• Tomato Base:start with plain tomatoes they can be fresh, canned, or tomato juice in a bottle!
• Vinegar:white distilled vinegar is 5% acidic and great for making this sauce.
• Worcestershire Sauce:is a flavorful fermented condiment loaded with umami flavor.
• Spices:I seasoned my bbq sauce with, cayenne pepper (don’t worry this is not a spicy bbq sauce), ground mustard, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, dehydrated onion, garlic, coriander, cumin, salt, chili powder, black pepper, white pepper, and ground all-spice.
• Sweeteners:a combination of honey, molasses, and brown sugar is used as the sweetener.
• Liquid smoke:I particularly like the hickory flavoring liquid smoke for this bbq sauce. It has the perfect wood smoke smell without actually smoking.
• Thickener:If you’ve made my Ketchup recipe you will know that I used Thermfloas the thickener. You can make this as thick or thin as you want with this cornstarch-looking powder, however, omit it if you choose to cook it down. This is how to thicken bbq sauce without changing the flavor.

Healthy Barbecue Sauce: make a sugar-free bbq sauce by using a natural sweetener like Xylitol in combination with honey. You could also sweeten with part pineapple juice and honey for the sugar. This homemade bbq sauce is gluten-free and Keto-approved.

How To Make Barbecue Sauce:

It’s easy to make homemade bbq sauce, just making it from scratch can be lengthy from all the simmering time and prep of fresh tomatoes. The overall concept is simple if you don’t mind all the cooking time needed. Growing your own tomatoes and supporting local farms is a great way to source tomatoes and if you are left with too much, bbq sauce freezes well so your options are many if you don’t wish to can.

1. Prep the tomatoes; wash, trim, and quarter. Transfer to a large pot.
2. Bring tomatoes to a boil.
3. Blend tomatoes with a stick blender and run them through a mesh sieve or use a food mill if you don’t want seeds or little skins in your sauce. It will still be a smooth sauce without that those extra steps.
4. Add all the spices and seasonings.
5. Cook bbq sauce down for about 2 hours.
6. Thicken with Thermflo.
7. Pack into jars.
8. Water bath for 20 minutes.
9. Finished.

Note: Be sure to use pure salt with no additives such as kosher salt, pickling salt, or sea salt when making.

Tools For Canning BBQ Sauce at Home:

I know, you may be thinking this does not sound like an easy bbq sauce, but I tell you canning is not so bad. I have been canning for years and invested in super helpful equipment that makes canning even easier. You don’t have to buy expensive equipment to make bbq sauce, use your biggest pot to slow simmer the sauce, and canning jars can be found at Walmart or even the Dollar store sometimes. Here is everything you will need to make bbq sauce at home if you plan to cook batches of homemade foods, time and again.

• 42-quart Stockpot- is primarily for giving the jars a water bath. A water bath is a process, of placing filled jars into a pot, filled with water. You would then bring everything to a boil to lock in the temperature needed for the jars to seal. I like this huge pot as I can fit more than a dozen of quarts at a time when canning.
• 24-quart Stockpot- for simmering the bbq sauce. In my video to make bbq sauce I used this same pot to simmer my sauce and then water bath since I only had several jars from this single batch. You could buy a water bath canner with a rack insert, but basic equipment works too if done safely.
• Quart canning jars with lids, about 7-quart jars, is how much this recipe makes.
• Jar lifter tongs and funnel for easy handling.

Does BBQ Sauce Go Bad?

Barbecue sauce can be canned, refrigerated, or frozen. Canning bbq sauce is a long-term option to consider if you want to prolong the storage time without the need of taking up your freezer space or going bad. Although some homemade sauces keep well refrigerated for several months it’s best to freeze them or can them to prolong the shelf life.

To test if your canning seal has formed, you will want to push down on the center of the lid after 24 hours. If the lid pops up and down it has not been sealed. Any kind of clicking sound is a sign the air was not vacuumed shut by the water bath process. In this case, you will need to refrigerate the bbq sauce or place the jar in the freezer. Barbecue sauce is good for several months in the fridge and if you keep it in the freezer it will last for up to 6 months or more.

Tip: if freezing bbq sauce in a glass jar make sure you leave headspace for room to expand (water or liquid can expand during freezing.)

Ways To Use BBQ Sauce:

• Chicken- shredded chicken for a quick BBQ Chicken sandwich or dip withCrispy Chicken Tenders
• best bbq sauce forRibs,beef brisket, franks, or Lil’smokies
• Pulled Pork or roast
• On homemade burgers or as the base to a Chick Fil A honey roasted bbq sauce
• Make a bbq chicken pizza and spread this sauce instead of pizza sauce.
• The glaze for meatloaf, combined with Homemade ketchup.
• BBQ Meatballsor in theseHoney BBQ Wings Recipe

Canned BBQ Sauce Recipe: