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Why Should You Make Your Own BBQ Sauce?

Do you have your own BBQ sauce? Maybe a family recipe that never fails when it’s time to get out the grill? If not, you might want to consider making your own. There are many benefits to making your own signature sauce. It’s easy, healthier than most store bought options & you can customize it to suit your, and your families’ tastes. With this article you’ll learn why having your own customized sauce is a good idea, plus get the recipe for a starter sauce & learn a secret to excellent flavor blending.

Store bought sauces – sugar overload!
Have you looked at the ingredient list of a store bought or name brand/mainstream BBQ sauce lately? Where you might expect tomato paste or roasted red peppers, you’ll usually find high fructose corn syrup. Sometimes corn syrup is even the first ingredient… and these aren’t necessarily the “sweet” style sauces. Hotter & savory sauces can also contain a surprising & unnecessary amount of sugars. If you check “honey BBQ”, you’ll almost never find real honey. Whether they’re replacing it with malt, HFCS, cane juice, etc., it’s still sugar. Adding a batch of sugar to your meat isn’t the answer for the best flavor.

Custom sauce – eliminate the preservatives, add more flavor
When you customize your own sauce in a small batch, there’s no need for preservatives. When you’re not forced to heat up anything (pasteurizing, canning, preserving or bottling) the foods you use will retain more nutrients. By making your own, you know exactly what’s going into it. Use your favorite local honey for a real honey bar-b-q. Customize how hot it tastes, the thickness, the level of heat, and the level of sweet. So, not only will a homemade sauce taste better, it will be better for you as well.

How hot do you like it?
You can turn up the heat exactly as much as you want for each dish you make. Choose from red pepper flakes, cayenne powder, or your favorite chili peppers and hot sauces. Capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers taste hot, is actually good for you. When you use real natural heat sources like chili peppers you get the benefits of capsaicin, like anti-inflammatory properties, hunger fighting ability (great if you’d like to lose weight). Making your own sauce is fast and easy too.

A secret to better flavor blending
Different tastes work together in harmony, so season your dishes and compliment the flavors of your food. A great way to help flavors mix together is to add chia gel to your sauce. Chia gel is the soluble fiber on the outside of the chia seed. The seed itself & the fiber have no flavor at all. However, the soluble fiber of the seeds grabs onto liquids and blends flavors together. If you add chia gel to your sauce, it’s best to refrigerate for at least half an hour before serving or using, to give the chia time to do its work.

When you bring out your own special sauce and serve it, you’ll impress your guests. They’ll know it’s been customized for this meat, this meal, and they’ll know its fresh too. You can get started right away with this simple recipe for a starter sauce. This recipe provides a basic sauce, but it’s meant for you to modify it by adding a little of your favorite ingredients. For instance, you could replace the molasses with honey, or add hot sauce instead of chili powder for a hotter sauce.

Basic BBQ Sauce Recipe
BBQ Sauce Ingredients
tomato paste
apple cider vinegar
lime juice
dried mustard
molasses
dry chia
cumin
chili powder

To make, simply mix all of the above ingredients well, in a measuring cup or small bowl. Stir well to ensure the chia is mixed throughout. Let the sauce rest for about half an hour before using. This will give the chia seeds time to do their work in blending the flavors together, for a smooth, tasty sauce. Next, taste a little bit of the sauce. If it needs any adjustments now is the time. Otherwise, you’re ready to go with your favorite grilled items.

Where else is flavor blending important?
Once you start with your own sauce and see how easy and tasty the results are, you might want to try making more things at home. Salad dressings for sweet or savory salads, blended berry sauces for your ice cream, and even stir fry marinade, pasta, or your favorite soups. Chia seeds work really well in all of these applications. They add two types of fiber, complete protein, omega 3 oils and many different trace minerals. So, when you use chia seeds in your cooking, you not only help to improve the taste, but you also help improve the nutrition quality.

Emily N Morris

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