homemade barbecue sauce

Dear Reader, I have not been having an easy time of it in the kitchen.

In the past couple of weeks, I have attempted to adapt my grandmother's brickle recipe to be gluten-free. That's a kind of frozen pecan and caramel crumble with a layer of vanilla ice cream in the middle. Kind of hard to get wrong. You would think.

Well, it was OK. A bit too sweet, not quite crumbly enough, kind of hard on the teeth.

Then I pulled out my. favourite. cook. book. ever. and attempted a white gazpacho soup with almonds and grapes.

It was so odd that I can't even think of the words to describe it. Kind of fluffy and acidic. Which probably doesn't make your mouth water.

Well, how about a simple mango gelato recipe with yogurt, honey and lime? Just – weird. The lime reminded me of salsa, which is not what I was going for in a dessert.

Saturday morning, I pulled out a very reliable breakfast cook book, mashed up some bananas and made banana oat cakes.

I fried them on the griddle, in lots of butter as directed, and they became mushy, gritty pucks.

  Instead of photos of bad food, here's my deck pot.
Isn't it pretty?

Now, when I go into the kitchen, Scott says, "Please don't make any more weird recipes." Which really boosts my confidence.

However, in the midst of all my bad luck, I did learn how to make a good barbecue sauce.

I don't know about you, but I get very frustrated when I try to buy barbecue sauce because the first ingredient is always some kind of chemical sugar. I did find a local company that makes barbecue sauce sweetened with honey, and I like it, but I wouldn't mind a bit more kick.

Enter Martha Stewart. (I won't call her "ever-reliable" because, with my recent track record, who knows what will happen the next time I attempt one of her recipes?)

With hot sauce, ketchup, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard and garlic, this barbecue sauce has a kick. It also has brown sugar and molasses, so it is sweetened but I wouldn't call it a very sweet sauce.

Martha has an excellent technique for barbecuing oiled and salted chicken (we did all thighs with skin that got crisp and tasty), where you don't baste the meat with the sauce until just before it's done cooking. That means the sugars don't burn black and the chicken finishes up with a nice glaze.

We had extra sauce, so we also tried it on sausages, with the same technique of just brushing it on at the end. We loved it. It was, I thought, finally good enough to be a recipe I could share with you.

Make this sauce. It takes 10 minutes. It actually works.

one year ago: eton mess with boozy berries
two years ago: german zucchini soup and sun tea
three years ago: minestrone with summer herbs and chocolate raspberry horse turds

martha stewart's barbecue sauce
from Martha Stewart
yields about 1 1/4 cups of sauce

1/2 c. ketchup
1 tsp. hot sauce
1/3 c. cider vinegar
3 tbsp. Dijon mustard
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. molasses

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Let simmer for 5 – 7 minutes, or until reduced to about 1 1/4 cups. Use what you need and store the rest in the fridge.