Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce begins it’s journey starting from garden vine-ripe tomatoes and ends up saucing your favorite grilled barbecue.
Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce
By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce is my recipe of the day. I enjoy making bbq sauce from scratch from various starting points–> ketchup to tomato sauce all the way down to fresh ripe garden tomatoes.
This is the ultimate starting point when making a sauce and can use up those extra tomatoes you have piling up.
The recipe itself makes one quart jar plus one pint jar. This is only suitable for canning using pressure canning techniques (not water bath). But you can feel free to refrigerate or freeze as you wish.
Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce
I brushed this on some pork steaks which I grilled up. They are a favorite of mine and are something we ate a lot of when we lived around St. Louis.
You can just as easily use this with anything else you might use barbecue sauce for, from grilled chicken to ribs to pulled pork sandwiches.
The flavors overall are brown sugar and molasses, which is a pretty middle of the road sauce for me.
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Fresh Tomato Barbecue Sauce
Fresh Tomato BBQ Sauce
Equipment
- Food Processor
Ingredients
- 5 pounds fresh ripe tomatoes (cored)
- 1 large onion (chopped)
- 2 tablespoons chopped garlic
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1-1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup light molasses
- 1/2 cup Louisiana pepper sauce
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon liquid smoke
- 2 tablespoons smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Saute the onion and garlic in oil to soften.
- Add onion and garlic to tomatoes and puree (in batches if needed).
- Place puree in a deep saucepan with remaining ingredients and stir.
- Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer with a splatter screen, stirring occasionally, one hour or until thickened.
Notes
Nutrition
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Thanks for the recipe Sue. I love BBQ sauce and have a lot of tomatoes to use from my garden. On the fresh tomatoes, do you quarter them and puree whole or do you blanch to remove skin and press out seeds?
No blanching. You won’t notice because the sauce is pureed and thick. Only chop if you need to fit them into your processor, but not necessary otherwise.
Why can’t this recipe be wb?
Use a USDA approved pressure canning method for tomato sauce or barbecue sauce.
Don’t understand that. My friend, WB tomato sauce last summer. Just last month she made an amazing lasagna with it. She says she has WB tomato sauce and bbq for years and never had a problem. Why do you say pressure only?
Not trying to be preachy here, just safe. Tomato varieties have varying levels of pH acidity, usually ranging from 4.3 to 4.9. Water bath canning is only safe for pH levels of 4.6 or lower. I think if you are going to do that, it would be wise to get some test strips and make sure of what you have. And wiser still to get a pressure canner which will heat the water to temps that will kill bacteria that would otherwise live on in those jars. You might can a thousand jars and get away with it but it only takes one. Be safe. Lock your doors at night and can your jars properly. Don’t make it easy for your friends, family and children to get hurt on your watch.
Pretty good, I was missing a lot of ingredients so I improvised. The only major miss was the lack of salt in the recipe.
Thanks for mentioning that! I went back and checked my hard copy in my files and saw I accidentally left off both salt and black pepper. Typos do occasionally happen. But I am glad you enjoyed it.
I made this recipe using my fresh garden tomatoes. I had three varieties-Rutger, Homestead and Golden Jubilee. I cut the middle core off but left skin and most of the seeds. I had 5 lbs of cut tomatoes. I only used 1 cup of vinegar and 1/4 cup Louisiana sauce. I like sweeter sauce. It cooked nice and thick but a little chunky for me, so I smoothed it out with an immersion blender. It’s beautiful, thick, sweet and tangy. Oh, I added 1/2 stick of butter at the end because my dad always added fresh butter to his sauce, so to honor him. 😊 Perfect! Great recipe! Thanks! Now to barbecue some chicken!
Yes, it is supposed to be puréed. I use a stick blender but a blender or food processor also works.
I added 1 Tbsp Garlic Salt, 1 Tbsp Cumin, an additional 1 Tbsp Chili powder, and 1 1/2 Tbsp Hickory Smoke Salt. Really perked it up!
How much does this recipe yield?
Approximately 6 cups, depending how much it is reduced.