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Barbeque Sauce (Kansas City, Missouri)

american-missouri-kansascitybbqsauceKansas City, Missouri's thick, sweet, and tangy sauces dominate the collective consciousness when it comes to American barbecue traditions. Widely distributed on supermarket shelves, slathered on ribs at chain restaurants, and used to dip McNuggets and fries at McDonald's, it's the thick and gloppy baseline that unites a nation of barbecue novices. Ketchup and molasses give it a sweeter, heavier consistency while additives like liquid smoke impart a barbecue flavour in lieu of coals, fire, or a smoker. Worcestershire, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, and other spice may also find their way into the recipe. Despite the style's critics, the barbecue restaurants of Kansas City often defy this reputation by creating a remarkable variety of house sauces with profiles from peppery and spicy to extra vinegary.

Although the original KC sauces were probably vinegary, hot, and not sweet, similar to Arthur Bryant's Original Barbeque Sauce, since the 1970s, the prototype has been KC Masterpiece - tomato based, and sweet. The style has spread coast to coast and nowadays, when you say "barbecue sauce", although there remain many regional and creative styles, most people think of the KC style.

The best have multiple sources of sweetness (brown sugar, molasses, honey, and onion - which gets sweet when it is cooked); multiple sources of tartness (vinegar, lemon juice, hot sauce, and steak sauce); multiple sources of heat (American chili powder, black pepper, mustard, and hot sauce); and it gets layers of flavour from all the above as well as ketchup, Worcestershire, garlic, and salt. Most Kansas City sauces are brass bands with multiple layers of flavours, sweets, and heats. Because they are thick and tomatoey, they sit on top of the meat, not penetrating very far. For this reason you don't want to use too much. Just one or two layers, max. Let the meat shine through. Don't drown it in sauce.

2 Tbsp. American chili powder
1 tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
2 tsp. Morton's kosher salt
2 cups ketchup
½ cup prepared yellow mustard
½ cup cider vinegar
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
¼ cup steak sauce
¼ cup dark molasses
¼-¾ cup pure honey
1 tsp. hot sauce
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 medium cloves garlic, crushed or minced

In a small bowl, mix the American chili powder, black pepper, and salt. In a large bowl, mix the ketchup, mustard, vinegar, Worcestershire, lemon juice, steak sauce, molasses, honey, hot sauce, and brown sugar. Mix them, but you don't have to mix thoroughly.

Over medium heat, warm the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onions and sauté until limp and translucent, about 5 minutes. Crush the garlic, add it, and cook for another minute. Add the dry spices and stir for about 2 minutes to extract their oil-soluble flavours. Add the wet ingredients. Simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes with the lid off to thicken it a bit.

Taste and adjust. Add more of anything that you want a little bit at a time. It may taste a bit vinegary at first, but that will be less obvious when you use it on meat. I recommend you run with my recipe the first time and then you can make it your own. Strain it if you don't want the chunks of onion and garlic. I like leaving them in, they give the sauce a home-made texture. You can use it immediately, but I think its better when aged overnight. You can store it into clean bottles in the refrigerator for a month or two.

Because it has a high acid and sugar content, it can keep for months in the refrigerator.

Makes 6 cups.

Cook's Notes:

  • Optional: If you are cooking indoors, or if your meat does not have a lot of smoke flavour, or if you just want more smoke flavour, you can add 1 tsp. of liquid smoke.
  • Vinegar: I like my sauce tart. Trust me, although it may taste tart from the bottle, it is perfect on meat. If you are not big on vinegar, cut it in half.
  • Honey: The recipe above is to my taste but I have found that most people like it better if I add another ½ cup of honey for a total of ¾ cups.
  • Steak Sauce: There are many different brands and they all have different flavour profiles, but what we want here is the meaty depth of savouriness that they call umami, so use whatever you have on hand.
  • Hot Sauce: A simple sauce like Tabasco is all you need. I like the chipotle flavoured version.
  • Oil: You may use butter or bacon fat for a bit more flavour, but keep in mind, they can get rancid with time, and they will likely shorten shelf life to about 1 week. Use a bottled vegetable oil and it can keep months.
  • Secret optional ingredient: Add 2 Tbsp. of tamarind paste. This exotic ingredient isn't really that exotic. It shows up on the ingredient lists of a lot of great BBQ sauces. It has a sweet citrusy flavour and really amps up a sauce.