Effortlessly Add A Punch Of Flavor To Chili With One Sauce

When ingredients like tomatoes or tomato sauce are added to chili, it's usually for two purposes: to tenderize the meat and to bolster the dish's flavor. It's tough to imagine that anything could beat this flavor enhancer, but one addition does exist, and it's probably already in your cupboard: barbecue sauce. Given that barbecue sauce typically contains tomatoes, tomato paste, or ketchup, it'll help tenderize the meat just like your plain ol' tomatoes will. However, this popular sauce will also amp up the chili's flavors, making them more complex, sweet, and even savory, depending on the type of barbecue sauce you use to prepare your favorite bean and meat stew. 

If you prefer a spicy beef chili, for example, a barbecue sauce with a bit of a bite, like Bachan's Hot and Spicy Japanese Barbecue Sauce with its red jalapeño puree and garlic, should probably be up for consideration. It is also worth noting that some baked beans recipes — chili's bean-based cousin — call for additions like rum or bourbon, so barbecue sauces that include a little booze marry together a couple of flavors (and ingredients) that many chili lovers favor.

The advantage here is that some of the other ingredients that people like to put on their chili to cool down the spicy nip, like yogurt, sour cream, or guacamole, taste great when mixed with a chili made with a spicy barbecue sauce. These flavors together are just the taste juxtaposition that you need when you're cooking up a next-level chili recipe.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a barbecue sauce with maple syrup, molasses, or brown sugar provides your chili with a sweet-and-savory contrast that makes both flavors stand out more. A sweet, smoky barbecue sauce flavored with liquid smoke or smoked paprika is an especially nice addition to a beef and bacon chili. It complements pulled pork chili for the same reason, so if you favor chili made with your leftover pork, a smoky barbecue sauce should be a go-to ingredient when preparing your stew. 

Additionally, some barbecue sauce recipes call for fruits like apples, pineapple, or peach, to name a few. These fruits infuse the barbecue sauce and, subsequently, your chili, with a natural sweetness that reminds the taste buds of a fall harvest. And since hearty chili dinners become even more popular as the nights turn crisp and cool, using a fruit-flavored barbecue sauce in your chili gives a nod to the season without overpowering the dish's flavor.

If you're the kind of foodie who just loves you some barbecue, there's a way to infuse your chili with even more of the signature sauce's smoky flavor: Marinate your meat in barbecue sauce before you cook it in your stew. While it might be tempting to chop up some steak, dump it into a zip-top plastic bag, and pour in some barbecue sauce, preferably, homemade barbecue sauce, you may want to add a few things to the mix to make it more like marinade and less like thick barbecue sauce.

Ingredients like vinegar or wine, as well as olive oil, make the sauce more like the standard liquid marinades you're used to for your meat. They're also pretty standard ingredients in marinade recipes. Additionally, while seasonings like oregano, thyme, salt, pepper, and more are usually added to homemade marinade sauce, you won't need to worry about adding them here (unless you want to). Most barbecue sauces already contain seasonings like paprika, dry mustard, Worcestershire sauce, tamari, and onion or garlic powder. Because they're already included, you won't need to add them to a marinade made with barbecue sauce. Once you're done marinating the meat, it can go into the chili pot to cook.

Besides giving your chili an even deeper infusion of flavor, taking the time to marinate your meat when making chili is advantageous if you're using a tough cut, like chuck roast or a pork shoulder or pork butt. Thanks to the barbecue sauce-infused marinade, the final dish will boast meat that's both tender and tasty.