Sunday Memories

On the weekends with my late husband, we used to grill out a lot. Not on a gas grill, but on a charcoal Weber kettle grill. We'd grill a couple of things at a time to maximize the charcoal.

My late husband used to make a homemade BBQ sauce that was so awesome, all my kids want a version of it to use on their own grills or roast meats. I remember some of it because he made this mix for me when I couldn't eat the overly sugared BBQ sauces available.

So my late husband made a sauce based on chunky salsa. He was trained as a cook and his mother used to regale his chicken parmigiana. He had some training in high school for cooking and he could cook all kinds of things from chicken to seafood.

Paul's Homemade Barbecue Sauce
1 jar of Chunky Salsa Sauce (use your favorite)
1 cup of Ketchup
1/2 cup Brown Mustard or Yellow Mustard
1/2 Red Wine
Approximately 1 tsp. each: Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Spanish Paprika, Oregano, Parsley, Basil
1/2 tsp. each Sage, Red Pepper Flakes
3 Tbsp. Apple cider vinegar (maybe a little less, I'm working from memory)
He'd put this all in a large bowl and mix it until completely blended.
When I started making this myself, I added molasses and rooster sauce instead of hot pepper flakes.
Everything in this sauce is mixed to taste. He used chunky salsa as the base because I liked a chunky BBQ sauce. I used to have a lot of trouble with sugar which is why we could not use a standard bottled sauce with tons and tons of sugars.

We would take a small portion of this and use it as marinade for the items to be grilled, then once chicken or pork was almost cooked through, then we'd start basting with the sauce and turning until meat was glazed and cooked through.

This BBQ sauce is so completely adjustable. You can use regular tomato sauce instead of ketchup and then add sugars and acids in your preference. But, he would use this with chicken thighs and they would be awesome, to the point that my son, who would be his step-son, still remembers this BBQ sauce.

Now that's saying something ...
Laura