Your Homemade BBQ Sauce Will Taste Unforgettable With An Extra Condiment

Let's say you're preparing a rack of beautiful barbecue baby back ribs that are just begging for a show-stopping sauce. Your bog-standard barbecue sauce is serviceable enough, sure, but you want something that will set your grilled dishes above the rest — something that will make a lasting impression on any guests lucky enough to try it. There may be tons of different barbecue sauces across the U.S., but how do you craft one that's unique to you? What's the secret to concocting such marvels? You need to look no further than your pantry for the creative boost you need.

Different kinds of jams are an absolute game-changer for whipping up unique and memorable barbecue sauces. Fruit jams offer an excellent blend of sweetness and rich flavor, and they blend effortlessly with the other ingredients in barbecue sauce. The fact that so many fruits and berries are synonymous with the warmer weather (read as: barbecue season) can also lend a sense of comfortable familiarity, as taste is peculiarly connected to memory. So for a barbecue sauce that stands alone in taste and also evokes the senses, a helping of jam is the ace up your sleeve.

If you've made some of your own barbecue sauces in the past, then you might have raised a hand at the thought of adding jam into the mix. Barbecue sauce already tends to have a fair amount of sugar in it, and indeed it's somewhat of an art to get it perfectly caramelized without burning it. In this case, adding another sugar-laden ingredient would drastically throw off the balance of the sauce. You'd be right to be concerned about this, but don't worry — the solutions are actually quite simple.

If you're planning on using fruit jam in your barbecue sauce, then it would be wise to plan ahead and use less sugar while making your sauce. It would still be in your best interest to keep some sugar, especially if you use brown sugar for that caramelly, molasses-esque taste, but too much sugar will throw your sauce out of balance. The thing is, the amount of sugar you should eliminate really depends on how sweet your jam is. So a super-sweet strawberry jam is going to require a massive scaling-back of your added sugar, while something more tart (such as rhubarb or apple-cranberry) can afford to have more sugar added to it. When in doubt, start light and add sugar to your taste, and opt for less sugar-packed jams if you can.

Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry — you'd be forgiven for automatically thinking of these as some potential jams to spruce up your barbecue sauce. They're all excellent flavors for sauce, and they go hand-in-hand with the traditional grilling season. And while these choices certainly have the potential to yield a great barbecue sauce, there's more to be gained by coloring outside the lines, so to speak. There are some jams that, while they may fly under the radar under normal circumstances, can really amp up your barbecue sauce.

Venture off the beaten path and you'll find jams and spreads with unique flavors that aren't overly sweet. Apricot jam, for instance, can enhance the flavor of your sauce in a subtle but undeniable way. Another option is fig jam, whose nutty, somewhat earthy undertones can really shine in a smoky barbecue sauce. Regardless of your choice of jam, you'll still have to be wary of how much sugar you add to your sauce. But. thinking outside the box for your jam selection can help you find the one secret ingredient that sets your barbecue sauce apart from all the others.