Home Made BBQ Sauce

We were at Costco yesterday and I was looking at some of the various BBQ sauces they had in stock, trying to decide between Tony Roma's, Bull's Eye Original, and some other "Kansas City Style" that I'd never heard of before. I wrote off the last one pretty easily because I wasn't even aware that Kansas City had its own style of BBQ sauce, but I was familiar with both of the other two and really like them both. Oh decisions, decisions.

Then it struck me - what the heck do I need to buy this stuff for? Surely I can make something every bit as good as these! I took a quick look at the ingredients and agreed with myself that yes, indeed I could do as well! Though I had not the slightest clue at that moment exactly how.

We made our way back home, and around noon my wife got called into work unexpectedly. Shortly after she left I had an epiphany! We had all sorts of pickles of various sorts in the basement - stuff we'd canned up over the last several years. I was betting that some combination of those with a good tomato base would be awesome! Little did I realise at the time just how right I was! The base for most BBQ sauces is sweet on the one hand, and vinegar/sour on the other hand. This is also the base for most home pickles!

I went down to the basement and came back with some Chow, some Zucchini Pickles, and some of my wife's Hot Dog Relish. The Chow is stuff from a massive batch I made 2 years ago with my Aikido Sensei. I ended up spicing it far too aggressively with all spice and cloves, which really overpowered it. But I was guessing that this would be really good in a BBQ sauce. Boy was I right! The Zucchini pickles are Bread-and-Butter Style, but are far easier to make than the traditional cucumber based Bread-and-Butter Pickles. The Hot Dog Relish I don't recall details of but will get them from my wife and post.

For the tomato base what I decided to try first was just some ketchup. The idea was to use that on the first trial batch, and then once I get some combination of those pickles that works out right, I could do another batch but make my own tomato base for it. As it turned out my first experiment was far, far better than I could have possibly imagined, and so I went into the cupboard to get a can of tomato paste for my second batch without ketchup. As it turned out we did not have any, so I used condense tomato soup instead - which also worked out extremely well! When it comes time to do another batch, I'll just use some of our tomato sauce, and some honey, and see where that gets me. Probably 2 parts tomato, and 1 part honey.

Here is my basic recipe :

• 500ml (2 parts) Chow
• 500ml (2 parts) Zucchini Pickles
• 250ml (1 part) Hot Dog Relish
• 500ml (2 parts) Tomato Base

And doing it the next time, I'll try 1 part (250ml) honey.

Now I'm off to dig out those other recipes for you :-) Sorry, the hot links above do not yet work, but they hopefully will soon!