Basic BBQ Sauce

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 4:02


CURTIS STONE: Hey, I’m Curtis Stone, and I’ve got a great GMC Trade Secret coming your way. It’s about how to make the perfect barbecue sauce. Now, you don’t have to buy it from a store, because you can make it at home. It tastes so much better. And you can make it exactly how you like it.

This is what you do. You start off with a pan and you just need a little drizzle of oil. Okay, I’m going to go with an olive oil, just a little drizzle. Get that nice and hot. And then over on this side, I’m going to start by throwing some onions into there. Now, this is just a base barbecue sauce, okay. You can throw whatever flavors you like into it. And I’ll show you more about that in just a minute.

But first off, you just want to stir your onions and just get them just slightly soft, so they’re just in for 30 seconds or a minute. I’ve got a little bit of garlic, so we’re going to put that in too. You throw that in. Okay, and that’s been finely chopped. And then it’s time to throw in your spices, okay.

Now, like I said, if you like it super spicy, it’s tailor made for you. Okay, so you put in a lot of cayenne pepper or some chili pepper. I’m going to keep this one pretty mild. So I’ve got a little bit of paprika, like two teaspoons, a little pinch of salt, and a little bit of hot paprika, so some of that can go in too. That’s going to get it nice and spicy.

Now, the idea is that you want to cook those spices out just for 30 seconds or so just to get that bitterness out and get that nice roasted sort of flavor in there. Once that’s cooked down a little bit, we’re going to add some of our liquid, Worster sauce first. So you give a couple of tablespoons of your Worster sauce, which is that nice salty sauce. Okay, a good couple of teaspoons of your Dijon mustard, right. That goes in. Give that a stir around. And then you just keep adding all your liquids. It’s pretty much a dump-and-stir sauce, which means you dump it all in, give it a stir, let it boil, and it’s good.

Brown sugar – that’s for the sweetness. A little bit of ketchup to give it that nice tomato-y flavor. Lovely. Good, good, good. Stir away. Then you need your vinegar, which gives it the nice sharpness. So we’ve got some malt vinegar here. Pour that in. And I’ve got a little bit of chicken stock out the back. Pour that in as well. And that’s it. You pretty much let it go. You want to let it boil away for about an hour or so and it’ll come down to a nice barbecue sauce consistency. And I just happen to have one ready. Look at that.

So if you have a look in here, see how it’s been bubbling away and it’s gone nice and thick? That’s what you’re looking for. So once you get it to this sort of consistency, you're ready to use it.

Okay, now, when you’re putting the barbecue sauce onto your grilled meats or your barbecued meats, the most important thing is you don’t put it on too early. Let me have a look over here. So the whole idea is you want to cook your meat until it’s sort of three-quarters of the way done, all right, and then, and not before, you come over with your barbecue sauce. I’ve got one of these fancy mops. You can use a silicon brush as well. But I’m going to dip my mop into my barbecue sauce. And then you just mop it straight over the top, just like that; all right, same with your chicken drumsticks. Just mop it over. Beautiful.

So you just put that over sort of five minutes before it’s done, let it finish off on the grill, and then you’re going to get that beautiful smoky flavor. It’s not going to stick to your grill and make a terrible mess, because you’ve just put it on at the right time. And your guests are going to go crazy because you’re going to serve the best barbecue they’ve ever had.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.