Name: Honey-Sriracha BBQ Sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 1 ½ cups ketchup; 3 garlic cloves (minced or grated); ¼ cup honey; ¼ cup apple cider vinegar; 2 tablespoons fish sauce; 1 tablespoon fresh ginger (grated); 2 teaspoons sriracha (see note)

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Say hello to your new favorite BBQ sauce! With the perfect blend of sweet and spicy and just the right tangy kick, you’ll want to slather this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce on everything that comes off your grill this summer. You can whip up this sauce in minutes with hardly any hands-on work, and it pairs beautifully with so many different dishes.

A glass mason jar of the honey-sriracha BBQ sauce on a white plate with burlap and a wooden spoon full of the sauce on the right.

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Why You'll Love This Recipe
Ingredients
Step-by-Step Instructions
How to Use
Perfect Pairing
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Why You'll Love This Recipe

Have you ever made your own homemade BBQ sauce recipe? If this is your first BBQ sauce-making rodeo, you're in for a fun and tasty time.

Quick and easy: Making homemade BBQ sauce truly couldn't be any simpler, and it takes hardly any time. And, come on, what sauce isn't better homemade?

Easily customizable: You'll love how you can easily customize a homemade BBQ sauce recipe once you have a solid base. This recipe starts with 1 ½ cups ketchup, ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar and ¼ cup of sweetener. From there, you can start adding all sorts of different spices, peppers or sweeteners to make your own unique batch.

Prepare this sauce well in advance of serving: If you're hosting game day or a summer cook-out, you can make this sauce up to three weeks in advance. That's one less recipe you have to worry about on the day of hosting to keep your job easy and breezy.

Related: For more recipes, try my Jamaican jerk BBQ sauce, coffee-bourbon BBQ sauce and blueberry BBQ sauce.

Ingredients

Sriracha: Obviously, this is the star of the show. We use just enough that it has a kick, but it doesn't leave your mouth on fire.

Apple cider vinegar: This gives us that classic BBQ sauce tang.

Fish sauce: You'll love the umami flavor this adds. If you don't have fish sauce on hand, you can find it in the ethnic aisle of the grocery store near the Asian ingredients.

Ginger: For the best flavor, we use freshly grated ginger rather than ground ginger.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Let's jump into this super easy yet delicious recipe to make all your grilling dreams come true.

Step 1: We start by pouring in all our ingredients into a small saucepan (photo 1).

The sauce ingredients in a small stainless steel saucepan on the stove-top range before stirring to combine them.

Step 2: Now we give everything a good stir to make one cohesive sauce (photo 2).

A wooden spoon stirring the sauce in a small stainless steel saucepan on the stove-top range to combine the ingredients.

Step 3: From here, we heat the mixture over medium and allow our BBQ sauce come to a low simmer for about 10-20 minutes (photo 3).

As the BBQ sauce simmers, we want to make sure we stir it frequently and keep an eye on the heat. With the ketchup and honey, we don't want to let the sugar burn. If the mixture gets too bubbly or starts to burn on the bottom, turn down the heat.

Simmering the sauce in a small stainless steel sauce pan on the stove-top range in the kitchen.

And just like that, we have our own tasty homemade BBQ sauce ready to go. Could it be any easier? I don't think so.

Now slather and enjoy.

How to Use

Don't you just love how versatile BBQ sauce is? One recipe that can be used in so many ways is always a winner in my book.

Here are just a few ways you can use this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce.

Glazed over grilled or oven-baked ribs.
Poured over brisket in a slow cooker. Make sure you use a liner.
Smothered as a burger, sandwich or sausage condiment.
Slathered on pizza dough for a fun base sauce.
Brushed onto grilled chicken or toss them to make these honey-sriracha wings.
Topped on baked potatoes.
Drizzled over tacos for a different twist.
Mixed into ranch dressing to use for salads or as a veggie dip.

You get the idea. This BBQ sauce is great on just about everything.

Oh, and it makes a lovely hostess gift for those summer barbecues. Let me know how you use this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce!

A close-up shot of a wooden spoon filled with the honey-sriracha BBQ sauce on a piece on burlap set on top of a small white plate.

Perfect Pairing

While the perfect pairing for this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce also depends on how you use it, I can give a general guide.

Obviously, pairing beer and BBQ is a time-honored tradition, and so many different pairings would actually work well with this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce. That said, I do enjoy a stout on the side.

Those roasted coffee notes from the stout blend nicely with the spicy sriracha, and then the honey rounds it all out. Sweet and spicy tends to work as a delicious combination with stouts.

Of course, a lot of people love a paler beer with their BBQ. If that’s you, a nice, clean kolsch is perfect. You also can't go wrong with an American pale ale.

When you're craving a glass of wine, pour yourself a nice Zinfandel, which is bold enough to hold up to your typical BBQ meats. Zinfandel also has enough fruit to balance the spicy sriracha and meld beautifully with the sweet honey. Plus, Zinfandel comes with a peppery kick that I love with a BBQ sauce.

With grilling season in full force, I hope you try this honey-sriracha BBQ sauce. I have no doubt this homemade BBQ sauce will jazz up your favorite grilling recipes.

Cheers!

A straight-on shot of a glass jar filled with the honey-sriracha BBQ sauce on a piece of burlap on top of a small white plate with a jar of honey in the background.

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