It’s Sunday… and why not some barbecued ribs, chicken or burgers for lunch? I will be the first to admit that we used to buy bottled barbecue sauces from the grocery. It just seemed so convenient and reasonably priced. Just pour them onto your meats and grill away… A quick look at the bottled ingredients didn’t seem so bad — only “modified” food starch and natural smoke flavor seem out of the ordinary — but what if we made our own instead? Would it hold up to the “commercial” taste we had grown accustomed to? The answer is a resounding YES!!! This is our take on BBQ sauce… great on beef ribs, hamburgers and probably chicken as well.
The recipe is inspired by a BBQ sauce recipe I found on-line from “Canadian Living” using stout, but I changed several ingredients, and added a special local ingredient to make it our own… To make a batch of four cups cooked barbecue sauce you will need: 3 Tbsp of canola oil, 2 medium sized white onions, chopped, 5 cloves garlic, minced, 1 Tbsp tomato paste, 2 and 3/4 cups of del monte tomato sauce (original) or if you have it tomato puree or bottled Italian passatta, 1/2 cup of mild molasses, 2 cups of cerveza negra, 3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, 2-3 Tbsp of tamarind or sampaloc paste, 3-4 Tbsp muscovado or dark brown sugar, salt and pepper to taste.
In a saucepan, add the oil over medium heat, add the onions and saute for 2-3 minutes, before adding the minced garlic. After about 5 minutes of sauteeing, add the tomato paste and stir well. Add the tomato sauce, molasses, beer, vinegar, tamarind paste and sugar and mix well. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for some 25-30 minutes and taste as it cooks, adjusting ingredients as desired, including sugar, salt, etc. When it looks like it’s roughly 4 cups of sauce, strain the sauce and cool… It’s ready to use straight away, or you can store it in the fridge for a few days until needed. It was excellent. Tangy, sweet, salty and rich. And a slight bitterness at the finish… Not as SHARPLY flavored as bottled sauces, but subtly nice and wonderfully homemade. Delicious!
19 Responses
MM did you marinate you meat on this sauce or used it as a glaze. Thank you.
thanks again for the generosity, MM. this sounds like a slamdunk..and i happen to have a bottle of tamarind paste in the pantry and half a rack of nice pork ribs in the freezer, so….
MM, where to buy molassess? thanks a lot for your help.
Lei: molasses is a byproduct of cane sugar or beet sugar when processing. Brown sugar contains molasses as well. Now if you have dark brown sugar at home, you can use that in place of molasses for that is as close as you can get to the flavour of molasses.
Bakerwannabe…the weather here is getting warmer…we are up to double digits today. MM’s post will be sooo good on smoked bbq’d ribs. It is time to bring out the charcoal smoker. If you want to try it, try brining the ribs first, apply a rub, then next day light the charcoal, soak wood chips in water, drain, and scatter over the prepared charcoal. push the charcoal to one side and put ribs on the other side (indirect heat). Smoke it slowly. You might need to add more wood chips and charcoal thru the day. When done, brush it with MM’s BBq glaze and quick sear over the side with direct heat until it is sticky. For a family of 4, I smoke and grill 4 RACKS of baby back ribs! My share…pinalalamang ko na for my boys and hubby! So, buy a good book to read for making this takes PATIENCE and TIME!
But if time is something you don’t have…the shortcut version …brine, rub, then grill over high heat on your propane barbecue till you get the grill marks and the smoky flavour. Put on roasting pan, brush with MM’s BBQ sauce liberally, cover with foil and finish cooking in the oven till tender …NOw, this will exude some liquid. Pour that liquid in the skillet (it has the smoky essence) and reduce that to syrupy consistency on the stove adding a bit more BBQ SAUCE. When ribs are done you brush with the smokey glaze/sauce again. Now you can quickly give it a quick sear in your grill again or broil in the oven to make it sticky!
maybe i just never noticed but is tamarind/sampaloc paste readily available in the supermarkets? thanks!:D
mek, in good groceries, they usually have it in the international or asian condiments section… usually thai brands. Otherwise, you can make it by boiling peeling and mashing very ripe tamarind with a bit of added sugar to make your own homemade tamarind paste. Lei, Rustan’s, Metro and probably Landmark, Cash & Carry and Unimart have bottled molasses. We use it for gingerbread every year, so I usually have some in stock in the pantry… bakerwannabe, used it as a glaze…
Oh MM thank you SO MUCH for sharing!!! I love BBQ sauce I will definitely cook up something using this soon. :)
Hi Mek, I recently bought tamarind paste in Bee Tin grocery in Binondo for just 80 pesos. :)
– Georgie
As Jennifer Reese of Make the Bread, Buy the Butter book says about BBQ Sauce: Make it.
When did San Miguel start brewing Cerveneza Negra again? I remember them from my remote boyhood along with Super Bock. They are not unlike Guinness which I had a few pints of yesterday in honor of Saint Patrick’s day.
Mm…have more cerveza negra? Use it to cook brined beef brisket and make corned beef!
Hi, MM.
I don’t have cerveza negra… but i have some cans of guinness :) … can I use this as substitute?
Cris, yes, guinness would work nicely.
help! how to get rid of the bitterness?
klee, it shouldn’t be that bitter at all, just a slight hint if you cooked this as described…
I guess helper did something wrong… I’ll have to try doing it myself. Thank you! :)
just want to say we tried this a few days ago and it was very good! it was such a hot day for grilling that after marinating the ribs in the sauce for a couple of hours, i decided to throw everything into the turbo broiler. after an hour, the ribs came out very well. the next day, my son made sandwiches out of the leftovers and sauce, with some lettiuce and pickled jalapenos. next time i’m adding some pepper flakes for some heat.
thanks for the recipe, MM!
I can’t wait to try this out! Approximately how long is the shelf life of the sauce?
hi there, if you cannot get that Cerveza Negra beer where i live in australia, what would you recommend I use, i cannot find it anywhere.
shannon, I suppose any dark beer would work reasonably well. I am not familiar with brands in Australia, but I suspect you have at least a couple of good dark beers… :)