Homemade BBQ Sauce is an easy recipe for a smoky, sweet barbecue sauce with no ketchup or liquid smoke. This is the best sauce for grilling!
A trusty bottle of BBQ Sauce can come in handy when making Pulled Pork Sandwiches or BBQ Chicken Wings, but nothing beats a great BBQ Sauce Recipe from scratch. If you’ve never made BBQ Sauce from scratch before, be prepared to have your mind blown!
Sabrina’s Homemade BBQ Sauce
This Homemade BBQ Sauce is a Kansas City-style sauce that you can use for grilling, roasting, dipping, or slathered on burgers. You’ll love this easy recipe for BBQ sauce without high fructose corn syrup, or ketchup that you can make in about 10 minutes. It’s so incredibly easy to get a flavorful, great sauce without having to buy an expensive bottle of BBQ sauce. The ingredients for homemade BBQ Sauce are very simple and you probably have most of them on hand.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1/2 yellow onion , diced
- 2 cloves garlic , minced
- 15 ounces tomato sauce
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup tomato paste
- 3 tablespoons Worcestershire
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
Instructions
- Add the oil and onions to a large pot on medium heat and cook for 5-6 minutes until the onions are softened, stirring occasionally.
- Add the garlic, tomato sauce, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, salt, and pepper and stir well.
- Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes until the sauce has thickened.
- Use warm or refrigerate until needed.
Nutrition
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Table of Contents
About this Recipe
Some BBQ sauce recipes use ketchup but we prefer using tomato paste and tomato sauce. No need to worry about the ketchup quality, if it’s gluten free, or has high fructose corn syrup. Plus canned tomato paste and tomato sauce are much cheaper than a bottle of good ketchup. Slightly smoky and sweet, this BBQ Sauce is a family-friendly version that kids will love. Unlike vinegar based sauces, it’s not overly tangy and there is just a hint of heat but not enough to make it spicy. It’s the perfect kid friendly condiment for Crispy Chicken Tenders.
Chef’s Note
You can make this sauce ahead of time or use it right when it’s done cooking. This BBQ sauce can be refrigerated, frozen, or even preserved by canning. There are some water bath canning instructions in this post if you want to make a large batch of Homemade BBQ Sauce for later or for gifts!
When it comes to the “best BBQ Sauce”, everyone has their own (often strong) opinions. But this is one of the best BBQ sauce recipes that you can easily make your own! It’s amazing the way it is and gets even better as you use the variations below to adjust to your taste.
Serving Ideas
This Homemade BBQ sauce is great sauce for so many of your favorite summer dinner recipes. Make BBQ chicken by brushing our Easy Grilled Chicken with this bbq sauce as it grills. Substitute the ingredients in this recipe to when making Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches or BBQ Baked Beans.
How to Store
- Serve: Serve this Homemade BBQ Sauce immediately in a recipe or cool down to for a dipping sauce.
- Store: Refrigerate BBQ Sauce in a glass jar or airtight container for up to 1 week.
- Freeze: You can freeze BBQ sauce in a sealed container for up to 6 months. Cool BBQ sauce before freezing.
Canning
- Prepare BBQ Sauce Recipe as usual. Use the slider tool on the serving size in the recipe card to adjust for larger batches.
- Sterilize canning jars, lids, and rings in boiling water while sauce is cooking. Keep hot.
- Fill hot jars with BBQ sauce, leaving a 1/4-inch gap from top, careful not to splatter. Clean rims completely if needed.
- Top with sterile lids and secure rings to fingertip tightness.
- Place in the bottom of a Water Canner and cover with water 2 inches over the lids.
- Seal lid and bring to a boil. For pint jars, boil 30 minutes. For quart jars, boil 40 minutes.
- After boiling, turn off heat and rest for 5 minutes. Transfer jars to a cooling rack and rest for 24 hours.
- Wipe jars, remove rings, and store in the pantry for up to a year.
Variations
- Spicy: To give your BBQ Sauce some heat add chipotle in adobo sauce, hot sauce, or cayenne pepper to taste.
- Sweet: Replace some of the brown sugar with honey or maple syrup for a sweeter sauce. You can add a tablespoon of molasses for a true Kansas City barbecue sauce. For an alternative sweet addition, you could try Dr. Pepper BBQ Sauce.
- Smoky: For a hickory BBQ sauce, try adding a little liquid smoke at a time to taste. Its powerful stuff so start with an ⅛ teaspoon of liquid smoke and go from there. You can also use smoked paprika for smoky flavor.
- Spices: Try different dried spices like smoked paprika, cumin, garlic powder, chili powder, and onion powder to make this BBQ sauce your own.
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This is a wonderful, ketchup-free sauce! Thank you so much!
Due to food sensitivities and available ingredients in the house, along with the recipe notes, here’s a successful tweak I made:
1 8-oz (227 g) can tomato sauce
1 6-oz (170 g) can tomato paste + 1 can water
1 Tbsp dried chives
1 tsp dried garlic powder
1/2 tsp each salt and pepper
1/4 tsp Liquid Smoke (hickory)
1/2 c apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp oil
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp paprika
1/2 c brown sugar
Whisk together, bring to boil, simmer for 12 minutes, enjoy.
(For pulled chicken in crock pot, no need to cook the sauce first if cooking it with the chicken.)
good
made the bbq sauce as store bought ones are too sweet and the price of store bought ones is getting to expensive especially if you need a lot. This recipe is perfect as it is not too sweet or too spicy. I have been looking for a recipe that does not contain ketchup. Thank you for it. I will recommend it to anyone of my family or friends
Glad to help! And thank you Elaine for the 5 star review.
Hi Sabrina,
I‘m from Austria and I would appreciate, if you could also send the metric information. I really want to try this recipe, it sounds so delicious!
Kind regards,
Simone
Hello Simone, I’m so glad you said something! Our recipe cards are supposed to have a Imperial/Metric button and this one was missing it! I just corrected the recipe card. Please go here https://dinnerthendessert.com/homemade-bbq-sauce/ and click on the metric button. Enjoy!
Unfortunately this sauce was insanely sweet (probably just my palate). Complexity and flavor is really nice, I just wish I’d known to divide the recommended brown sugar amount by 3.
Hi Sabrina,
The recipe says this makes 12 servings but I don’t what size serving that is? Can you tell me how many cups this will yield? Thank you!
Hi Sabrina,
I have the same question! How much is one serving?
I haven’t tried this. But if I wanted to add a bourbon to this what amount would I use?
I’m so sorry this comment got stuck and I just came across it. I know your meal is long gone now. 1/4 cup would be great, just simmer longer to thicken.
Love this sauce. We brushed it on our chicken legs and it was so good!!
So glad you enjoyed it, Aimee.
The depth of flavor in this is SO good! I will NEVER go back to store bought again…makes that stuff taste too sugary…
Woohoo!! Thanks for he 5 stars, Lisalia.
So excited to try this recipe! We are big barbecue sauce fans here!
Enjoy!
I made this sauce tonight and used it on your baked chicken thighs recipe. OH MY GOD! The sauce was SO good and the chicken was probably the most tender chicken I’ve ever had in my life! I found that the can of tomato paste in my pantry had expired so I had to leave that out of the sauce and it was still delicious! I will be making this again soon! Thank you for all your awesome recipes!
So glad you still decided to try, Shirley! Thanks for the 5 stars.
Can’t wait to try!
I hope you enjoy it!