Spicy Mustard-Tomato Barbecue Sauce
As I'm approaching nearly 350 barbecue sauce reviews, I have a pretty clear understanding of my personal preferences, and I've found one of my favorite styles are those formulated with a base of both mustard and tomato. This combo provides the very clear tomato barbecue taste, but the heightened amount of mustard adds a great kick that amps up the bite and prevents the sauce from tipping too far into overt sweetness. So it kind of surprised me that I had not yet crafted such a sauce myself and used The Meatwave's twentieth anniversary as an appropriate time to do so.
At this point in my life I've not only tried an insane amount of barbecue sauces, but I've also made a lot of recipes for them as well. So I have a base process that I've come to prefer and that begins with sautéing onions until they begin to brown. This helps inject the sauce with a sweet onion flavor the melds better than using things like onion powder, in my opinion. Once the onions are done is when I add in the garlic and cook that until just fragrant, which brings in a garlic flavor while lessoning its harshness a bit.
After that I add in all the rest of the ingredients and let the sauce simmer. For this particular sauce, I didn't venture too far off from my standard sauce recipe, but tipped the scales so yellow mustard has more of a representation than ketchup. I also upped the amount of vinegar and lemon juice for a stronger tartness, as well as used light brown sugar to dial back the molasses flavor that dark brown sugar brings.
This sauce started out fairly thick, so I didn't have to let it simmer for too long to thicken up—just about 10 minutes. Once I was happy with the consistency, I brought in my immersion blender and gave the sauce a whirl to chop up the onions in order to better integrate them into the sauce. You can also do this in a regular blender or skip the step altogether, no matter how you proceed, the sauce will turn out delicious.
I originally didn't set out to make this a spicy sauce, but the mixture of the red pepper flakes with the mustard and a bit of hot sauce left this with a good kick that I was all to pleased to have since I'm also a fan of spicy. Beyond the heat, the sauce was hitting the right notes with a mellow upfront sweetness that quickly became balanced out by a strong tang and bite thanks to the mustard and vinegar combo. The spices and Worcestershire added just enough complexity and savoriness to make the final product all the tastier and make it what I would consider a pretty excellent barbecue sauce. This style of sauce has also been what creates my favorite barbecue chicken, so that was the first use it got, but that's a story for next time...
