Cook it Fresh

Kraft Honey BBQ Sauce on the left, Homemade sauce on the right

Barbecue sauce is such a summery flavor.  The smoky, spicy scent of barbecued meat on the grill brings back many Summer memories and a plate of barbecued chicken, in particular, is one of my favorite grilled dishes.  For the past few years, I have made a homemade barbecue sauce several times.  One day  I wanted to make barbecue chicken, realized that we had no bottled sauce in the house, and so decided to try my hand at a homemade recipe.  I now vascillate between the convenience of bottled sauce and the delicious flavor and adaptability of homemade.  This post was the first time I’ve tried the two side by side in an attempt to decide if I really preferred one to the other.

Homemade Honey Barbecue Sauce

One of the first homemade barbecue sauces I tried was Ina Garten’s recipe in her wonderful cookbook Barefoot Contessa At Home. I have since tried many other recipes and finally come up with one that of my own but I kept two of the ingredients in Ina Garten’s recipe:  Hoisin sauce and honey.  I like using honey to sweeten the sauce because it adds a tangy flavor and thickens the sauce a bit at the same time while hoisin sauce provides a rich, smoky undertone that is unexpected, but so delicious.  The great thing about homemade barbecue sauce is that you can adapt it very easily to the tastes of those you are serving so you can easily add or subtract seasonings and the sauce will still turn out great.

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. canola oil

1 medium onion, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 15 ounce can tomato puree

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/2 6 oz. can tomato paste

1/4 cup honey mustard

1/3 cup hoisin sauce

1 Tbsp. worchestershire sauce

2 teaspoons chili powder

1.  Heat the oil over medium heat in a medium pot.  Once oil is hot, add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes.

2.  Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan (tomato puree through chili powder) and stir until well combined; bring to a boil.  Turn heat to low and simmer the sauce until it is thickened, about 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.

As I thought about the best way to test the 2 sauces, barbecue chicken was the first dish that sprang to mind.  I bought a bunch of chicken drumsticks and marinated half of them in the homemade sauce and half in Kraft Honey barbecue sauce for a couple of hours before putting them on the grill.  I also brushed on some of the sauce a few times during the grilling.  Also, I put a small bowl of each sauce on the table so we could taste them in their pure form, without the flavor of the grill getting in the way.

In the end, there was no real consensus about which sauce tasted better but I did find out one important fact:  Store bought barbecue sauce seems to stand up to the heat of the grill much better.  The chicken with the homemade barbecue sauce burned much faster than that slathered in store bought sauce and the bottled sauce also seemed to cling to the meat better than the homemade.

As far as flavor goes, we were undecided but I will say that I love the flexibility of homemade sauce since you can add any ingredients you like to make it suit your tastes.  If you like a sweeter sauce, add some extra honey, if you prefer something spicier, it is easy to sprinkle in some cayenne or add more chili powder.  Also, I thought that the store bought sauce had a bit of a gloppy texture when tasted uncooked but that might be the attribute that makes it so great for grilling.

In the cost stakes, store bought sauce wins out hands down.  The homemade sauce cost almost 6 times the price of the bottled barbecue sauce.  I didn’t buy the most expensive brand, so even many gourmet brands would be cheaper than making it homemade.  Of course, bottled barbecue sauce also wins easily in the time category since the only effort required is to open the bottle.

All of these results are very much dependent on the specific kinds of sauce I used in this post, so please let me know if you have a great homemade barbecue sauce that you think would work better for grilling.  I’d love to try it out!

Bottom Line: Store bought barbecue sauce is the clear winner if you are planning on using the sauce for grilling.  In addition to being cheap and easy to make, even the cheaper brand of sauce that I bought had a great flavor and  was less likely to burn or stick to the grill than homemade.  Homemade barbecue sauce would be better for non-grilling uses, such as an addition to baked beans or as a topping or a dip.

The times below are just the time that goes into making the barbecue sauce, not the marinating or grilling of the chicken.  Prices are for approximately 3 cups of sauce.