Root Beer Barbecue Sauce

This Root Beer Barbecue Sauce is tangy and sweet and perfect for grilled or baked chicken, beef or pork.

Even though we don’t own a grill, we love the flavor of barbecue. Bottled sauces never seem to quite cut it, but I’ve never found a completely homemade sauce that I love. So I like to doctor up the my favorite bottled sauces, like Sweet Baby Rays.

For this Root Beer Barbecue Sauce, the regular or spicy bottled sauces work best. The sweet ones tend to just be too sweet combined with the soda. It’s super simple to bump up the bottled sauce a few notches by adding root beer, liquid smoke (one of my favorite ingredients!), garlic and a little soy sauce. It was sweet, sticky and smokey – all of my favorite barbecue sauce qualities! We like to cook our meat (in this case, babyback ribs and chicken thighs) in the pressure cooker (cooks quickly but still comes out super tender) and then top with the sauce and broil. If you’re grilling, I’d also recommend adding the sauce at the end to avoid burning. If baking in the oven, coat with sauce, bake, then coat with sauce again. Broiling for a few minutes will help caramelize the sugars and give you that nice sticky finish.

This is the first (semi) homemade sauce that I’ve really enjoyed and I can’t wait to make again! My daughter, who is pretty picky about eating meat off of the bone (truth be told, so am I) absolutely loved this sauce with pork ribs. She’s not much into messy food either, so she made sure to keep her own package of Huggies® wipes right next to her so she could clean her hands and face after every few bites. Thankfully these wipes hold up to the mess each time and are gentle enough on her skin that she can use them over and over. (This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Huggies®. As always, all opinions are my own.)

I’m glad this little girl is finally branching out and trying this messy meat on a bone thing. I however, will be the one over there in the corner eating my ribs with a fork and a knife.

Join Huggies® #HugTheMessSweepstakes or visit them at Huggies.com.

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Root Beer Barbecue Sauce

Kristin Maxwell

Prep Time 5 mins

Cook Time 20 mins

Total Time 25 mins

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Servings 1 ½ cups

Ingredients

  

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• 1 cup of your favorite bottled barbecue sauce
• 1 cup root beer
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce

Instructions

 

• Combine ingredients in a small pot over medium heat. Bring to boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for 20 minutes or until sauce is slightly reduced.
• Brush meat with the sauce and cook as desired, or brush on meat after cooking and just before serving. For a thicker sauce, dissolve 3 tablespoons of cornstarch in ¼ cup of water. Add to the sauce in batches, stirring in completely each time, until you are happy with the consistency.

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For more messy eats, try these:

No Bake Reese’s Chocolate Cheesecake

Crispy Honey Baked Chicken Wings

 Hawaiian Barbecue Chicken

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