Barbecue fans blog

Hans Dekker


Is there such a thing as low carb bbq sauce recipes? The answer is yes! You can enjoy all that barbequing has to offer with several different low carb barbecue recipes.

The main item in BBQ sauce that causes the high carb levels is of course sugar, so you should look for recipes that do not have any sugar or substitute the sugar with a substitute like Splenda. You can make your sauces sweet if you like, but not all barbeque sauces have to sweet to be delectable.

Try this one on. You will need:

1 minced onion,

1 small can of tomato sauce,

2 cups of water,

¼ cup of apple cider vinegar (one with no sugar),

¼ cup of Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, paprika,

chili powder,

cinnamon,

cloves,

salt and pepper all to taste.

Place all of the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer for around 15 minutes. All done and you have a low carb barbeque sauce that everyone at your dinner party is sure to love.Of course you can adjust if you are serving seafood, beef, pork, chicken or plain hamburgers.

For any barbacue sauce you will need some type of tomato product such as tomato sauce, ketchup, or a combination of tomato puree and tomatoes. Then all the other ingredients are pretty much taste.

You can add onions, green pepper, red pepper, jalapeno peppers, orange juice, pineapple juice, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce or anything else to enhance the flavor and aroma of your barbeque sauce. But, to keep it low in carbs stay away from sugar or any items that have sugar added. Some ketchup’s have sugar added, so be sure to read the label before you purchase the items to prepare your BBQ sauce.

Enjoy your low carb cookout!

Bill Anderson


This is another one of my favorite bbq sauces because it’s a sauce that is great for bbq competitions. You see, most people prefer a sweet barbecue sauce and competition judges are people too! When we first started cooking ribs for competition, this was one of the recipes we developed. You can substitute your favorite bourbon for the Wild Turkey. This sauce gives the ribs a real nice color… and the taste ain’t bad neither! This sauce is excellent to use with the professional rib cooking techniques found in our book, “Competition BBQ Secrets”…

Chatham Artillery BBQ Team’s Bourbon Barbecue Sauce:

1/4 cup Wild Turkey Bourbon

2 cups ketchup

1 cup Brown sugar

1/2 cup Apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup Pineapple juice

3 teaspoon Molasses

2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoon Olive oil

1 teaspoon Lemon juice

1 teaspoon Salt

Mix all ingredients and simmer on stove until sauce thickens.

Imagine that you are a bbq competition judge… tasting the same old bbq sauces over and over again. The first thing the judges do is look at your ribs and give it a presentation score. Then they pick up a rib and tug on it to see how tender it is. Your rib meat should pull clean from the bone, but not fall off the bone. After that, they take a small bite and taste your ribs. Now what do you think will score higher… the same old sauce that they already tasted 100 times that morning, or something new that dances on their tongue and surprises them with a unique flavor that they have never tasted before?

Well… I think you know which of the bbq sauces the judge will score higher – the unique one. The Wild Turkey sauce with apple cider and pineapple flavors. Your family and friends will love a unique sauce recipe too. KC Masterpiece is a great sauce, but don’t you think they have all tasted that before? Give them what they want… a sauce with a bold, unique flavor.

Jeff Slankard

Let’s talk only about vinegar based barbecue sauce. How’s that?

You might think that this really narrows down the choice of sauces. Yes and no. We have eliminated tomato based sauces, sure, but that still leaves us with everything east of the Mississippi river. Let’s get out of Kansas City and head toward the east coast.

Lots of sauces have a combination of vinegar and tomato as a base. If we cut out everything but the vinegar, that takes us all the way to North Carolina (actually eastern North Carolina). This is the home of the vinegar based barbecue sauce. From there, BBQ sauce recipes have less vinegar and more additional ingredients the farther away you travel (all the way to back to Kansas City, where they use very little or no vinegar).Global Products, Global Manufacturers, Global Suppliers, Global Exporters, Global Importers

If we tried to create a map of the United States showing the location of all the styles of BBQ sauce, with all of the regional and local variations, it would look like a 1600s map of Indian tribes with all their associated bands. There would be hundreds of them (maybe more).

Down to the Basics

The most pure form of vinegar based barbecue sauce would be straight vinegar (preferably apple cider vinegar), with maybe a touch of salt and pepper. Quite often it is flavored with some red pepper flakes or a little cayenne pepper.

Unlike tomato based sauces, vinegar based BBQ recipes are used at all stages of the cooking process. Tomato based sauces have sugars that can burn. They are normally used as a finishing sauce and added during the last minutes of smoking. Usually those tomato sauces have a few more ingredients and are also thicker.

Vinegar is powerful stuff. It is acidic and will penetrate meat. It aids with tenderization and helps to allow the pork to be pulled apart (vinegar based barbecue sauce is most often used with pulled pork). Because of this characteristic, if the vinegar is flavored, it will also get flavor deep into the meat. By using it early and often during smoking, the flavors will intensify.

A Simple Sample Recipe

Here is a basic vinegar based BBQ sauce recipe. It can be used as a marinade (before smoking), a mop sauce (used during smoking), a finishing sauce (applied at the end of smoking), or a dipping sauce (at the table). This helps the meat stay moist, tenderizes it, and flavors it. It’s no wonder people keep using it.

1 1/3 C cider vinegar

2/3 C water

1 Tbl salt

1 tsp chili powder

Something like this, or any other form of vinegar based barbecue sauce, should be made a day in advance, if possible. That gives the vinegar time to break down the seasonings and absorb them.

Remember that you control the flavors. Add your favorite spices, change the type of vinegar, use more or less water… it’s entirely up to you. You can even add things like tomato sauce, ketchup or mustard. Just don’t go overboard or you will end up back in Kansas City, with no vinegar, looking for a different article.