The Only 3 Ingredients You Need For Mouthwatering BBQ Sauce

Barbecue is about as old as the United States itself, when the slow flame-cooking methods used by Indigenous people of Florida and the Caribbean Islands met the pigs brought here by Spaniards sent to colonize the New World. Until then, barbecue sauce looked a lot different; the native peoples used lime juice and pepper to flavor their meats. Along with pigs, the Spaniards brought wine and vinegar, which contributed tanginess and balances out any sweetness; the islanders shared their sugarcane and molasses, which not only added sweetness but also stickiness, which is now a hallmark of barbecue; and those from Central and South America offered spice from chiles as well as tomatoes, for acidity and sweetness. 

These three profiles — sweet, acid, and a flavor-balancing ingredient — are still the foundations of any good recipe. And all you really need for delicious homemade barbecue sauce is the holy trinity: ketchup, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce.

This combination of three ingredients results in a Kansas City-style sauce, which is known for its tomato base and spicy sweetness. The trio of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar began appearing in barbecue in the 1909, when the Georgia Barbecue Sauce Company in Atlanta first popularized its use. It didn't appear in bottled form until 1940, when the Heinz company first introduced its version featuring (unsurprisingly) ketchup.

Today, ketchup is ubiquitous in barbecue sauce. It not only adds sweetness and tang, but it provides the thick texture we've come to associate with barbecue sauce, giving it a base structure and enabling it to stick to the meat. In fact, it's one of the ingredients Chowhound says are essential for amazing homemade barbecue sauce.

Second in our list of three is brown sugar. Why brown and not white? Because it contains molasses, which adds the sticky consistency and sweetness we crave in barbecue. Although you can use other sweeteners, including plain molasses or an unexpected condiment, fruit jam, brown sugar is an easy addition that provides a caramel-like sweetness and stickiness. And finally, Worcestershire sauce has what many cooks call umami, a hard-to-define savory flavor that conveys a combination of salt, bitter, and sour. The Worcestershire sauce provides balance, keeping the other two ingredients from being too cloyingly sweet and thick.