New Years was brought in a second time with our friends in Nevada City. We made the same menu with lots of love and good will put into each dish. Joe Meade is guest blogging today about how he made the very special vegetarian BBQ sauce. Happy 2009!

As the theme of today’s brunchtrditional southern soul food, a rich, dark BBQ sauce was the obvious choice. I’ve messed around with different types of BBQ sauce over the years (sweet and sour, chipotle, teriyaki, spicy etc.) with various degrees of success and failure. Sometimes, the unintentional mistakes have yielded the tastiest results. I like to make the sauce at least one day in advance. You know how marinara and chili always taste better the next day, same thing with BBQ sauce.

If you can start with fresh tomatoes that’s awesome. I used some good quality canned organic tomatoes that I pureed until very smooth. Over medium heat combine the tomatoes with a can of tomato paste. You won’t have to reduce the sauce as much. Next I add black strap molasses, safflower oil, apple cider vinegar, liquid smoke, mustard powder, black pepper, white pepper, salt and a dried hot chili. Bring the sauce to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. I add the brown sugar at this point as well as a little hot sauce that helps to give the sauce a spicy finish.  I wanted to try a few new ideas as the ingredients were handy so I added a bit of black currant syrup, black sea salt, butter and sherry.

I especially liked these additions as they seemed to round out the flavor and the syrup and salt helped make the color that much richer. Then you just cook the sauce for at least 2 or 3 hours up to 5 or 6 hours, stirring occasionally so that the sauce doesn’t stick. Let the sauce cool to room temperature and store in the fridge. I like to leave the sauce on the stove covered overnight to really give the flavors a chance to meld together. Wow! I can’t wait to make BBQ sauce again. I want to try something new already!

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Uncategorized by Wendy Van Wagner