Smoky Homemade Barbecue Sauce (No Liquid Smoke!)

Discover a homemade barbecue sauce with the mouth watering smoky flavor you’ll need to turn your barbecue pork, chicken, or any meat into a backyard culinary masterpiece!

Smoky Homemade Barbecue Sauce Video Tutorial

Smokey Homemade Barbecue Sauce Ingredients:

1 onion
2 Jalapeño peppers
2 garlic cloves
1 green pepper
1 Cup brown sugar
2 Cups ketchup
1 Cup cider vinegar
1 Cup honey (local if possible)
½ Cup yellow mustard
1 Tbsp hot sauce
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Kosher (or sea) salt
Ground black pepper

As with any great BBQ sauce, start by actually barbecuing some of the ingredients. Set up your gill for two-zone cooking, with some apple or other fruit wood for a sweet smoky flavor.

Smoking Your Ingredients

Place the jalapeños, garlic and onions on the indirect side, with the garlic placed as far from the heat source as possible since it’s going to cook the fastest. Close the lid and cook shortly, making sure not to burn your ingredients!

When done, remove the seeds and dice the jalapeños. Also dice the onions you grilled and the green pepper, and mince the smoked garlic cloves.

RELATED: How to Smoke Garlic at Home

Mixing Your BBQ Sauce Ingredients

Heat up some vegetable oil and some kosher salt. Throw in the green pepper, followed by the onion, jalapeños and minced garlic. When they start shrinking, add in the brown sugar, cider vinegar, ketchup, mustard , hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and honey. Mix well, then finally add salt & pepper to taste.

Bring the mix up to a simmer, then turn off the heat to avoid burning the sugars in the honey.

Pour the sauce into a food processor that can handle the heat (or let it cool down first) and blend well to break down the larger pieces.

Bottling Your Smoky BBQ Sauce

Finally, bottle your homemade barbecue sauce in a glass bottle or container (make sure to use warm bottles to avoid any cracks forming from the rapid change of temperature). Use immediately, or seal for storage.

And remember, when smoking meat, always use a high quality and reliable smoking thermometer to properly measure your temperatures and prevent over cooking, undercooking, or mis-timing your cooks.

Enjoy!