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This homemade BBQ sauce gets its sweetness from dates and blackstrap molasses. Use it just like you would store-bought BBQ sauce!

Darrol Henry is obsessed with BBQ sauce lately, and, by extension, so am I. We’ve been eating BBQ tofu, dipping carrot sticks in BBQ sauce, and using it as the base for homemade pizzas. I even caught Darrol dipping cashews in it. Which, it turns out, is kind of delicious.

The point is, my kid is more BBQ sauce than man right now, and BBQ sauce is not ideal, as sauces go. Like ketchup, it has a lot of added sugars in it, which I’m sure is part of its appeal. This homemade BBQ sauce is me trying to make a healthier version of my son’s favorite thing by replacing some of the refined sugar with whole fruit. And I’m super jazzed with how it turned out!

There are a lot of recipes for homemade BBQ sauce out there, and at their core, they contain pretty much the same things:

garlic

tomatoes

molasses

sugar

chili powder

cloves

vinegar

worcestershire sauce

I read dozens of recipes while working on this one, and the main take-away is that BBQ sauce is flexible. If you like more vinegar, add more! If you want it spicy, add hot peppers! If you like it sweeter, use more sugar (or dates! or molasses!). The recipe below suits my tastes, and I encourage you to consider it a jumping-off point for experimentation.