BBQ sauce

Good morning everyone!  We are on vacation, but I got this picture before I left on Thursday.  The daycare kids had BBQ beef quesadillas for lunch and of course we've used all of our store bought barbeque sauce, so I had to make my own.  I did a quick search and found this recipe on about.com.

My changes are in ().

• 2 cups ketchup (1 cup ketchup, 1 can diced tomatoes, drained and pureed-a fresh tomato peeled, seeded and diced would work well and that's what I'll do next time)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (1/3 cup evaporated cane juice, 2 tsp. molasses)
• 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (only about 1/4 tsp. b/c I ran out of cayenne)

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over a low heat. Stirring occasionally and simmer for 20 minutes. Sauce should be thin, but not watery. Allow to cool. Store in an airtight container and refrigerate. Sauce is better if allow to sit for a day.

 

We all know that I didn't actually measure the ingredients (I'm more of an eye-ball it kind of gal.), and I was super busy getting ready to leave, so the sauce ended up too tangy to start with-it appears that I got a little carried away with the vinegar.  Oops!  I added a little more of everything and ended up with a pretty sweet sauce.  It was ok, but I think it would've been better if I hadn't been quite so distracted and actually came closer to the amount of the original ingredients.  Another change I made was to sub one of the cups of ketchup with my last can of diced tomatoes, drained and pureed.  I was too cheap to use 2 cups of my organic ketchup-that stuff is expense.

 

I will definitely keep this recipe and tweak it a little more to make it tangy, yet sweet, but not overly one or the other.  I don't want much do I? =)