Barbecue Sauce

I haven't counted the exact proportion, but a whole lot of my recipes on this blog involve barbecue sauce.  I love it.  It's an addiction.  I won't even pretend that I can quit any time I want to, because I can't.  I will forever be hooked on barbecue, and I'm okay with that.

However, I've always eaten barbecue sauce right off the grocery store shelf.  I've tried lots of kinds, but tend to come right back to the same couple of varieties - mostly Masterpiece and Bullseye.  For as much as I love barbecue sauce, you would think I might be more adventurous with trying new brands.  Rather than look for a new favorite brand, though, I think the time has come to just create my own uber-sauce.

I like my barbecue sauce sweet and smoky, with a touch of spice and not too much acid.  There are as many philosophies on what constitutes the ideal sauce out there as there are barbecue-eaters, but that's how I like mine, so that's what this sauce aspires to be.

If you want to make barbecue sauce from scratch, it just seems misguided to me to start from ketchup - so I won't do it!  This recipe won't completely free you from bottles off a supermarket shelf, but why it just seems like cheating to take a bottle of ketchup, add spices, and call it "my own" sauce.

For this sauce, you'll need canned tomato sauce, canned tomato paste, molasses, onion, garlic, cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, a bit of olive oil or butter, and some salt and pepper.  When summer comes and fresh tomatoes are at their peak, I'll likely revisit this recipe and make it from fresh tomatoes rather than canned, but this one should be easy to make year-round with ingredients that are more or less omnipresent, at least in my kitchen.

First, finely mince the onion and garlic.

In a bit of olive oil or melted butter, sweat the minced onion and garlic for a few minutes until the onions are translucent and tender, but not browned.

This next step is complicated.  Are you ready?

Add everything else.  Everything.  Mix it up well.

Simmer the sauce on low heat for about 20 minutes until reduced slightly, darkened in color, and thickened.

That's it.  Taste the sauce after it's reduced and adjust your ingredients to your own particular taste.

The sauce should keep for up to a month or so in the refrigerator, or much longer if frozen or canned.

Brush the sauce onto meats as they finish cooking, make some barbecue chicken pizza, or just eat by the spoonful.  Okay, maybe not the last one.  Unless you really, really want to.

Recipe: Barbecue Sauce
Prep Time: 5 Minutes | Cook Time: 25 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 1 Quart

Ingredients

• 1 large Sweet Onion
• 4-5 cloves Garlic
• 2 cans (15 oz.) Tomato Sauce
• 6 oz. Tomato Paste
• 1/3 cup Molasses
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1 tbsp Cayenne Pepper
• 1-2 tbsp Smoked Paprika
• 1 tbsp Ground Mustard
• 2 tsp Cumin
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Finely mince onion and garlic.
2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil or butter in a pan over medium heat.  Add onions and garlic and sweat 4-5 minutes until onions are translucent and tender, but not browned.
3. Add remaining ingredients and stir.  Reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes until sauce is reduced.
4. Taste to check seasonings and adjust as needed.
5. Brush over meat in last 5-10 minutes of cooking.

Barbecue Chicken Salad with Candied Almonds

I really love a good main-course salad.  The trouble is, it's hard to make a salad that's really interesting without going off the deep end in terms of complexity, cost, or both.  This salad is an attempt to split the difference - it's a main-course salad composed of very classic salad ingredients, but with enough added complexity to keep it interesting without breaking the bank.

I'm obviously a lover of barbecue, so I decided to carry that love into my salad.  The salad involves both barbecue chicken breast and a tangy, barbecue-based dressing.  The tang and spice of the barbecue are offset by sweet red pepper and carrot, and candied almonds add some crunch and another lay of sweet-and-meaty flavor.

It doesn't take a lot to make a decent salad.  I just use fresh romaine for my greens, but you can feel free to spice it up as desired.  Red pepper and carrots round out the vegetable array.  We'll cook the chicken in barbecue sauce to give it some flavor.  Candy slivered almonds in just a bit of sugar and butter as a sort of stand-in for a crouton.  You can dress the salad however you like, but I really enjoyed the simple barbecue dressing I made from barbecue sauce, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil.  

The chicken is the lengthiest part of this salad's quick preparation.  Toss it into a greased baking dish, cover with some barbecue sauce, and throw it in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes.  Turn it halfway to make sure everything gets nice and saucy, and take care not to overcook.

Once the chicken is on its way, we can prepare the vegetables.  Rinse your romaine well and chop it down to nice, bite-sized pieces.

Give the carrots and red peppers a good dice as well, and toss in with the romaine.  The vegetable portion of the salad is now complete!

It's surprisingly easy to candy almonds - all it takes is some careful attention.  That's why we did all of the other preparation first, as you really don't want to be tempted to turn your back on the pan and chop carrots - next thing you know, you'll have a pan full of burned sugar.


To get started, put a skillet on over medium heat.  Once it's warm, add your slivered almonds and toast for a couple of minutes until they start to darken.  The best way to judge when they're getting toasted is by smell - the whole kitchen will suddenly take on a deep, toasty, nutty aroma.

Once the almonds are toasted, add just a bit of butter to the pan, then slowly add some sugar.  Start with about a tablespoon, then mix well, keeping the nuts moving constantly.  The sugar will melt clear almost immediately on making contact with the pan, and will start to burn just seconds later unless you keep everything in motion.


After a minute or so, add a second tablespoon of sugar and continue mixing.  Add a touch more sugar after another minute if you think it's necessary.

Once the sugar starts to darken on the nuts, transfer your candied almonds to cool on some wax or parchment paper.  Spread them out on the paper, otherwise they'll all be stuck together in one lumpy ball of deliciousness.  That's not exactly a fate worse than death, but makes them hard to sprinkle over salad.

At this point, your chicken is probably about done, so it's time to get things ready to plate.

While you wait for the chicken to finish up, make some dressing.  The exact ratios to use depend on your barbecue of choice.  I like my dressing quite tangy, so I used quite a bit of lime juice and vinegar.  Combine barbecue sauce, apple-cider vinegar, lime juice, and a touch of olive oil in a small bowl, and mix well with a small whisk or a fork.  The dressing will want to separate eventually, but holds together for a good couple of hours after a good mixing,

Pull out the chicken, and slice it up.  Be careful, hot barbecue sauce is akin to napalm.

Now serve!  Cover your greens with the sliced chicken breast and plenty of candied almonds.  Dress lightly, to let the flavors speak for themselves.  Each bite should have lots of complex flavor - tender chicken, crisp lettuce, sweet red pepper and carrot, crisp, sweet, meaty almonds, and just a hint of acidic tang from the dressing.

Recipe: Barbecue Chicken Salad with Candied Almonds

Prep Time: 5-10 Minutes | Cook Time: 20 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 8-10

Ingredients

Salad

• 2 heads Romaine Lettuce, washed
• 1 lb boneless/skinless Chicken Breast
• 2 Red Bell Peppers
• 2 cups Baby Carrots
• 1/2 cup Almonds, sliced
• 1/4 cup Barbecue Sauce
• 1 tbsp Butter
• 2 tbsp Sugar

Dressing

• 1/4 cup Barbecue Sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp Olive Oil
• 3 tbsp Lime Juice
• 3 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a large baking pan.

Add chicken breast to baking pan and cover with barbecue sauce.  Bake 20 minutes or until chicken tests done, turning halfway.

Chop romaine lettuce down to bite-sized pieces.  Dice red pepper and carrot.  Mix all vegetables in a large salad bowl.

In a skillet over medium heat, toast slivered almonds 2-3 minutes until beginning to darken.  Add butter and sugar one tablespoon at a time.  

Mix well, keeping almonds in motion, 2-3 minutes until all sugar is added and beginning to darken.

Cool candied almonds in a single layer on wax paper.


Whisk together barbecue sauce, olive oil, lime juice, and vinegar in a small bowl until no longer separated.


When chicken is done, slice carefully.


Serve sliced chicken and candied almonds over mixed greens and vegetables, topping conservatively with dressing.

Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork

My little brother grew up with the nickname "Ketchup King."  He would put ketchup on anything.  Seriously, anything.  I just don't understand.  The ketchup part, that is.  Why use ketchup as a go-to condiment when you could be using barbecue sauce?  I never got a royal title to go with my love of barbecue sauce (Barbecue Baron?), but I loved it as a kid and still love it now, as evidenced by my recent Barbecue Chicken Pizza post.  Here's another recipe that puts barbecue in the front seat - pulled pork.

This post will be the first of a pair of slow-cooker pork features.  When I buy a nice piece of pork, I like to buy a nice big one and prepare it a couple of ways - the most recent favored pairing is BBQ pulled pork followed by carnitas.  Even something as delicious as a good BBQ pork sandwich can get old after eating it for a few nights, after all (though it should be noted that my girlfriend Kristin disagrees with this statement on principle).

This post will detail the whole of the process for the BBQ pulled pork sandwiches.  But, if you want to follow the BBQ-then-Carnitas model, I'll note when and how to reserve some of the cooked pork, and you can pick up that project in a soon-to-come post.

Yep, that's pop on my cutting board.  Trust me on this one.

However you want to flavor your pork in the end, I love this preparation for slow-cooker pork.  Start with a nice big hunk of pork.  Just make sure it will fit into your slow cooker.  I find 3.5 to 4 pounds is about the limit for mine, and is also enough to feed Kristin and I for a good week straight on delicious, porky goodness.  Avoid tenderloin or any other particularly lean cuts for a slow-cooker preparation, as those cuts will end up dry and tasteless.  Low and slow demands some fat on the meat.

As for the rest, we'll need a large sweet onion, a large red bell pepper, some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (found in the mexican aisle), and some pop.  Just about anything dark in color works.  Root beer is great, as is plain old cola.  This time I tried some cherry cola and really liked the result.

Peel and chop the sweet onion and array the pieces in the bottom of the slow cooker.  This will keep the pork from overcooking on the bottom if your slow cooker is a bit overzealous at times, and also impart some nice flavor to the meat.

Chop the red pepper and send it down to the bottom to accompany that poor, lonely onion.

Now for the pork.  No preparation needed, just drop it right in there.

Next, we'll need plenty of liquid.  First, open up the chipotle peppers and drain out the adobo sauce over the pork.  This will add a really nice, gentle heat to the final product.  If you like it hot, add a pepper or two.  Personally, I reserve the peppers themselves for my carnitas.  Just the adobo sauce does plenty for the barbecue preparation.

Add enough pop to cover the lot (it takes about a liter, for me).  Don't worry too terribly much if the top quarter-inch of your meat stubbornly refuses to submerge.  Also don't worry too terribly much about the fact that the contents of your slow cooker could easily stand in for witch's brew.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

I love slow-cooker dishes because I can do the preparation in the morning before I head off to work.  When I get home, the smell has utterly filled my apartment.  It's a good thing.

After 6-8 hours have elapsed, drain off all but a few ounces of the cooking liquid.  Be very, very careful in this process, as its easy to burn yourself either on the cooking vessel or with superheated soda.  Either is quite unpleasant.

You'll see that the pork has practically pulled itself just in the cooking.  This is a good thing, but we'll need to help it along.

Shred/pull the pork with a pair of forks or your preferred meat-shredding implements.  The pork ought to be tender enough to fall apart just because you look at it funny.  If the meat is at all difficult to get apart, give it another hour or so on low and try again.  Make sure to remove the bone at this point, if your cut of meat included one.

We're just about at the point of return - after this, it's all barbecue.  If you want to reserve some pork for Carnitas (or anything else, really), now is the time.  I throw about half of the shredded pork into a container with the chipotle peppers we reserved earlier.  That all goes into the fridge to wait patiently until I'm either tired of or have run out of BBQ sandwiches (Hint: it's usually the latter).

It's barbecue time.  My sauce of choice varies, but I'm fond of Bullseye, Masterpiece, and Famous Dave's.  Scoff if you will, but they get the job done.  Choose your favorite sauce, and have plenty on hand.

Sauce the meat liberally.  Tastes vary on how saucy a BBQ sandwich ought to be, so use your best judgment.  I find that if I haven't yet substantially changed the color of the meat, it can't be saucy enough yet.  Add salt and pepper to taste, as well.

You could make a sandwich and eat it right now if you wanted.  But wait, patience will be rewarded!  Instead, put the cover back on the slow cooker and give the barbecued goodness inside another hour on low.  This will meld all of the flavors and infuse the pork with truly sublime barbecueyness.  Yes, it's a word.

After an hour, or when you can no longer stand the smell, it's time.  Scoop a generous helping of meat onto a bun and go to town.  It's too early in the season for good corn on the cob, but these sandwiches go great with it.  Whatever else is on the plate, though, the pork will be the star of the show.  Expect much finger-licking and demands for seconds and/or the recipe.

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Recipe: Slow-Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes   |   Cook Time: 6-10 hours   |   Difficulty: Easy   |   Servings: 10-12.

Ingredients

• 2-4 pounds Pork Shoulder
• 1 liter Cherry Cola
• One large Sweet Onion
• One large Red Bell Pepper
• One can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce
• One bottle Barbecue Sauce
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

Chop onion and bell pepper and arrange on bottom of slow cooker.  Place pork shoulder on top of chopped vegetables.  Pour adobo sauce and cherry cola over pork to just cover.  Reserve chipotle peppers.

Cover and cook 6-8 hours on low.

Shred pork with two forks.  If pork is not tender enough to shred easily, cook on low an additional 1-2 hours.

Optional: Reserve half of shredded pork for Carnitas.  Store with reserved chipotle peppers until ready to cook.

Add barbecue sauce to pork mixture to taste, approximately 1/2 cup per pound of pork.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Cover and cook an additional hour.

Serve immediately on sandwich buns.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

I'm a born-and-raised Chicagoan, so it goes without saying that I love pizza.  Real pizza, mind you, not that flappy, sagging nonsense they try to pass off in New York.  I'm hardly one to limit my pizza love to the traditional, though.  Barbecue sauce has always been my condiment of choice - who needs ketchup when you could be using barbecue!?  Sometimes, the same goes for other tomato products, like, say, pizza sauce.

Now, this is no California Pizza Kitchen pizza.  This is hearty, in-your-face barbecue pizza.  And no cilantro.  Nothing against it in general, but I just don't think it has a place on my BBQ pizza.

It's a nice, simple cast of characters.  The way I usually prepare this pizza, I take some shortcuts, so it's quite a quick prep.  Skipping the shortcuts can result in a slightly more customized pie, but there's really no shame in using somebody else's chicken and crust.  This is a fantastic use for leftover chicken, too.

So, chicken.  The easy, safe bet is to grab a supermarket rotisserie chicken and take all the meat off the bone.  If you want to roast some up yourself or use leftovers, more power to you.

As for the crust, I usually go for pre-made.  I know, pre-made pizza crust is bad.  Like, quite bad.  However, we're going to pile so much goodness on it that I promise, you won't even notice.  If you have the time to make your own, though, do it!

As for the rest, you'll need your favorite barbecue sauce, some onion and fresh mushrooms, and some cheese - I like to mix mozzarella and cheddar.  It's as easy as that!

Give your onion a rough chop into topping-sized bites.  I like mine quite large for this particular pizza.  No need for subtle, fine dicing here.  Toss the chopped onion and your mushrooms into a skillet with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper and sautee for a couple of minutes.  Not too much - they'll cook a bit on the plate.  Basically, just give them a flip-and-stir time and again while you're breaking down the chicken.

In just a couple of minutes, you'll have all of your toppings ready.  Break the chicken down into bite-sized pieces.  Fingers are your best tool, if you're using a rotisserie chicken.  A knife will just get in your way.

 By the time your veggies look like this...

Your chicken should be looking like this.

Now add one to the other in the skillet, and give it just a dollop of barbecue sauce before mixing it all together.  This keeps anything from drying out during baking, and ensures that absolutely every bite of the finished product is full of barbecue flavor.

Time to assemble!  First, rub a bit of olive oil into your crust.

Follow that up with a generous amount of barbecue sauce.  How much you need depends on the thickness of your particular brand.  But, really, don't be afraid to go bold.  This pizza is all about the barbecue, after all.

Now dump the toppings out from the skillet onto the crust.  There will be a whooole lot of toppings.  I told you this wasn't a subtle, namby-pamby pizza, didn't I?

Now cheese it!  I like to use a thin layer of mozzarella, covered by a thin layer of cheddar.  Lots of alternatives also work great, though - Colby and Monterey Jack are certainly worth a mention.

For those about to bake: we salute you!

10-12 minutes of bake-time in a 400 degree oven, and your pizza will emerge looking like the beauty just above.  Let it cool a few minutes, and serve with a nice, fresh salad.  If you want to class it up a bit, this goes great with a crisp Riesling.

Recipe: Barbecue Chicken Pizza

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes   |   Cook Time: 10-15 Minutes   |   Difficulty: Easy   |   Servings: 6-8.

Ingredients

• 2 Pizza Crusts, frozen or pre-packaged
• 1-2 pounds Chicken, rotisserie or roasted
• .5-1 cups Barbecue Sauce
• 1 cup Mozzarella Cheese
• 1 cup Cheddar Cheese
• 1 large Sweet Onion
• 8 ounces miniature Portabella Mushrooms, chopped

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Rough-chop onion into large chunks.  Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet and sautee chopped onions and mushrooms 2-3 minutes until just beginning to soften.

While vegetables are sauteeing, break down chicken into bite-sized pieces.  Once vegetables have cooked a few minutes, add chicken to skillet along with 2-3 tablespoons barbecue sauce.  Mix well.

Lightly oil pizza crusts.  Top with 1/4 cup barbecue sauce per crust and spread evenly across surface.  Add additional sauce as needed to cover.

Spread toppings from skillet evenly over crust.  Top each pizza with a thin layer of both mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, about 1/4-1/2 cup of each.

Bake pizzas 10-12 minutes, until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown.

Cool 5-10 minutes and serve with salad.