Grilling Season: Spicy Beer BBQ Sauce Recipe

15 Jul Grilling Season: Spicy Beer BBQ Sauce Recipe

By Charlie Sasse

I love firing up my grill, especially in the warm months! I invite people over and lay out a big spread of grilled meat, sides, and beer to share. While it is not always convenient, I always prefer to make my own BBQ sauce. Since I am a beer nerd, I typically add beer as one of the base ingredients (though sometimes whiskey is substituted). I mean why not?!?!

The beers I choose to cook with tend to be big, bold dark beers so the flavors compliment the meat. One of my favorite beers to make BBQ sauce with is Scarlet Lane’s Dorian stout. The flavors are bold enough to stand up to the other ingredients and charred meat, and delicate enough not to create a sauce that tastes solely like beer. Check out the recipe below and give it a shot. If you are scared of heat take out some, or all, of the chili peppers. If you are not, add more chili peppers or add something like Pure Cap. Since it is pure capsaicin oil it will not change the flavor but will add a nice burn. Don’t be scared to feel the burn, it only hurts for a little while…

Ingredients:
1 Cup of Stout or Porter
3 sliced chili peppers (I use a mix of jalapenos and habaneros)
2 cups of ketchup
½ cup of tomato paste
½ cup of vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
1/3 cup of honey
2 tablespoons of molasses (or for you Canadians, use real maple syrup)
1 lemon (for the juice)
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
½ onion chopped
1 bunch cilantro chopped
1 teaspoon of black pepper
1 teaspoon of smoked sea salt
1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
1 tablespoon of dry or prepared mustard (if using prepared, use something good, not the bright yellow crap you put on hotdogs at your buddies cook-out because they are too cheap to buy the good stuff)
¼ cup of Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. In a saucepan combine all of the wet ingredients (except the oil), cilantro, black pepper, smoked sea salt, smoked paprika, and dry mustard (if used, if not it is a wet ingredient) over med-high heat, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to low and let simmer.
2. While waiting for the saucepan to boil, heat the sesame oil in a skillet and sauté onions until translucent. If you are like me, you want the edges to be burned a bit; it adds a nice bitterness to the flavor.
3. Once the onions are done, and the saucepan is boiling or simmering, add the contents of the skillet to the saucepan.
4. Let this simmer for at least 2 hours while occasionally stirring, or until you feel the flavors are combined.
5. While hot, I like to strain my sauce through a colander to remove the big chunks, then through a mesh strainer to make it smooth. Straining through a colander first makes it easier to strain it through the mesh strainer. Neither step is necessary, especially if you want your sauce to be chunky. I don’t.
6. After this, you can use the sauce, but I prefer to put it in a covered container and let it sit in the fridge overnight. It allows more time for the ingredients to get to know each other and hook up for some late night flavor increasing shenanigans.

*Just like any other recipe, you should change it up and make it your own. That is half the fun in cooking!

Keep drinking great beer and talking about it; I know I will!