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Barbeque Sauce


MarkIsCooking

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I don't have much experience with homemade BBQ sauce, but I just tried a recipe I got from Emeril via www.foodtv.com and it was awesome. Lots of ingredients including ketchup, jalepeno, paprika, cayenne, onion, brown sugar, salt, pepper and more.

Anybody used unusual ingredients in their BBQ sauce that produced an awesome result?

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"If you don't want to use butter, add cream."

Julia Child

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I've been making a killer sauce that I tweak one way or another every time I make it. It goes roughly like this:

1:1 Tamarind paste to Ketchup

Brownsugar

Worceshire

Crown & Royal

Handground:

Tellicherry Pepper

Cardamom seed

Coriander seed

Cumin seed

Kosher Salt

Garlic

Healthy Pinch of:

Cayenne

5spice

I think that's this weeks recipe, give or take a spice or two. It's awesome.

"I took the habit of asking Pierre to bring me whatever looks good today and he would bring out the most wonderful things," - bleudauvergne

foodblogs: Dining Downeast I - Dining Downeast II

Portland Food Map.com

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Yesterday on FoodTV I saw some guy on Michael Chiarello's show make these ribs. While I would not cook the ribs as described, I think the idea of braising the ribs slowly then reducing the jus to use as a base for a pureed BBQ sauce sounds good. Next time I make ribs, I think I'll probably try some variation of that recipe.

Don Moore

Nashville, TN

Peace on Earth

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any of these can make interesting add-ins:

- 1 cup strongly brewed coffee per every 3-4 cups sauce

- healthy doses of Tabasco Chipotle or adobo sauce from chipotles en adobo

- celery seed (whole or ground)

- juices: lemon, lime, orange, sour orange, cider

- other chiles: ancho, guajillo, cascabel, pasilla

- dried fruits: cherries, apricots, currants, raisins

- unsweetened chocolate / cocoa powder

- cloves and/or allspice

...I thought I had an appetite for destruction but all I wanted was a club sandwich.

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My favorite is pretty simple--ketchup, cider vinegar, brown sugar, honey, and a few spices. A relative of mine swears by a recipe from Paul Prudhomme, which contains pecans and citrus fruits. I found the recipe via Google; it looks interesting, just too labor intensive for my liking (I like to keep my BBQ simple).

John

"I can't believe a roasted dead animal could look so appealing."--my 10 year old upon seeing Peking Duck for the first time.

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  • 4 years later...

I'm making some pulled pork at the moment and am doing a "Mid-South Carolina-style" mustard-based sauce. The recipe from the July 1997 issue of Cook's Illustrated is:

1 cup cider vinegar

6 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons honey

4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon hot red pepper sauce

1 cup veg oil

I've used this recipe several times to good effect (even praised by guests who were actually from the region the recipe says this is native to). That said, however, I'm a bit bothered by the cup of vegetable oil. I just smoked this shoulder and have a great ton of tasty pork dripping (about 50/50 fat and non-fat): of course it's solid at fridge temps, but at serving temps, any thoughts about what would happen if I omitted the vegetable oil and replaced it with this smokey goodness?

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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I suspect it'd be fine. At room temperature, you ought to be able to get it to emulsify okay.

But honestly, a cup of oil sounds a little gross to me: I tend to prefer sauces with just a little bit of fat. To give you a comparandum, =Mark's S. Carolina-style sauce only calls for two tablespoons of butter, and is awesome: I am making up a batch this afternoon.

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If you look at this as a vinaigrette, it's actually not very much oil at all, as a ratio to the vinegar. It emulsifies right up no problems, and I have never found it to have an unpleasant mouthfeel. That said, it's going on five pounds of shredded pork shoulder, which is bringing plenty of its own fat to the party. Health food this ain't!

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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mine is pretty simple too but i love it - sweat down finely chopped onions until completely softened but not browned add 1/2 tsp thyme and 1/2 tsp hot chilli powder,3 parts malt vinegar to 2 parts runny honey and a good squeeze of tomato puree. I leave it to simmer and caramelise for around 45 mins, you can add a little water if it reduces too much. Especially tasty with ribs and pork chops mmmm

"Experience is something you gain just after you needed it" ....A Wise man

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If you look at this as a vinaigrette, it's actually not very much oil at all, as a ratio to the vinegar. It emulsifies right up no problems, and I have never found it to have an unpleasant mouthfeel. That said, it's going on five pounds of shredded pork shoulder, which is bringing plenty of its own fat to the party. Health food this ain't!

Different strokes, I guess; I've never been happy with high-fat barbecue sauces. I guess my feeling is that the pork shoulder has enough fat that the sauce doesn't need much of its own: sort of the opposite of a salad with vinaigrette.

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Yes, that's a good point: there's no reason to think that a vinaigrette would make a good BBQ sauce!

I went ahead and made the sauce using the pork fat rather than the veg. oil, and I'm pretty pleased with the result on its own. It remains to be seen how well it works on the pulled pork.

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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Good topic to bump!

Vinegar, molasses, tomatoes and salt -- that's a good one.

Peter Gamble aka "Peter the eater"

I just made a cornish game hen with chestnut stuffing. . .

Would you believe a pigeon stuffed with spam? . . .

Would you believe a rat filled with cough drops?

Moe Sizlack

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=Mark's sauce is my go to sauce for pulled pork.

I make a BBQ sauce that also includes some smoked salt and chipotle tabassco, that I use on ribs and chicken.

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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Tamarind is great in a BBQ sauce. The only time I use a cup of oil or more is in a mop, with equal parts of apple cider vinegar and some of the rub I'm using.

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OK, I made the Cook's Illustrated version above, but subbed in 1 cup of pork drippings for the cup of vegetable oil. This cuts the amount of fat in half, since the drippings were almost exactly 50/50 fat/liquid. It was excellent: the rendered fat had picked up a great smoke flavor, plus was very "porky" so this really intensified all the flavors. The pulled pork didn't taste like sauce, it tasted like pork with sauce. Very moist, of course. I think that (if you are OK with the fat content) this sauce is a winner.

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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It's heresy, but I made some sauce with cranberries the other day. I had a small qty left over from making cranberry bread and cooked them down with just a little sugar. Pressed the "sauce" thru a fine mesh strainer and got a smooth ketchup-like texture. Mixed in a bit of honey, salt/pepper/soy/5 spice/vinegar and it was pretty tasty. The only disappointment was it still retained a bit of bitterness. Probably because I didn't want to add too much sweetener.

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" - Oscar Wilde

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Changing tack slightly and looking for help.

I used to, in the 80's, go to Huntsville, Alabama on business quite frequently. The locals would take us to a place out in the country, but not far from Huntsville to a BBQ place called the 'Greenbriar'.

Their specialty was a WHITE BBQ sauce that was fantastic. I've never seen it anywhere else.

Does anybody know about this place or even more importantly have a recipe for the sauce?

I'd be eternally grateful for a recipe.

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Changing tack slightly and looking for help.

I used to, in the 80's, go to Huntsville, Alabama on business quite frequently. The locals would take us to a place out in the country, but not far from Huntsville to a BBQ place called the 'Greenbriar'.

Their specialty was a WHITE BBQ sauce that was fantastic. I've never seen it anywhere else.

Does anybody know about this place or even more importantly have a recipe for the sauce?

I'd be eternally grateful for a recipe.

White BBQ sauce with a mayonnaise base is a specialty in Alabama. Googling should find you a slew of recipes: here's one I haven't verified: http://www.culinarycafe.com/Barbecue/White_Barbecue.html

-- There are infinite variations on food restrictions. --

Crooked Kitchen - my food blog

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For pulled pork I'm a big fan of the mustard-based sauce, but for other applications I came up with a tomato-based sauce that's Asian-inspired, kind of like a tomatoey, spicy teriyaki sauce.

Ingredients, as best I can remember:

tomato juice

chicken or vegetable stock

soy sauce

rice vinegar

fish sauce

vegetable oil

sesame oil

onion

garlic

ginger

crushed red pepper

five-spice powder

tomato paste

mirin

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