Beer Barbecue Sauce

Barbecue sauce is ubiquitous at American cookouts, but consider it also a go-to sauce that can be used in a variety of ways beyond coating cuts of succulent beef, chicken, and pork. Our beer-based barbecue sauce is a delicious and easy-to-make preparation that you can have at hand in your fridge and use on traditional choices like burgers, wings, or shredded beef or pork, but also on other preparations like pasta salads, sandwiches, and wraps. The sky is the limit when you have a flavorful sauce like this one in your kitchen arsenal. Ready in half an hour, the sauce keeps well for about two weeks in an airtight container in the fridge.

Barbecue traditions have been around for centuries and are a statement of the blending of local and foreign traditions and ingredients. Start with the cooking devices indigenous people in the West Indies used to cook their game on an open flame. Add the introduction of pigs into the Americas after the New World was conquered by the Spanish and the combinations of flavor and spice that enslaved people from Africa brought with them and tried to reproduce with the ingredients they had at hand. Barbecue sauces used on meats have evolved over the centuries depending on what's available, but they're all bold, spiced, tart, and earthy. Some use lime juice and some vinegar because that's what was available. Some added mustards, molasses or sugar—or both—and some were tomato based. Nowadays, you can see the differences depending on the area of the United States you live in.

Be mindful that this barbecue sauce contains alcohol and as such shouldn't be offered to kids or adults that need to abstain from alcohol for health, dietary, or personal reasons. Contrary to popular belief, cooking alcohol doesn't always evaporate all of it, but the longer you cook recipes that have added alcohol like beer or wine, the more the alcohol content in the preparation reduces. That said, it takes a long time for all alcohol traces to be gone, so inform your guests about the ingredients. Finally, because the sauce has Worcestershire sauce, which usually contains anchovies or fish sauce, this sauce isn't suitable for vegans or vegetarians, unless the Worcestershire you are using is vegan or you replace it with soy sauce or tamari. In that case, proteins like tempeh, tofu, or seitan can be coated with the delicious sauce.