You Won't Regret Using Jelly In Your Barbecue Sauce

What, exactly, constitutes barbecue sauce? As with just about everything else about barbecue, this is a contentious topic: depending upon regional tastes, barbecue sauce can range from thin and vinegary to gloopy and molasses-like. (It can even, for reasons that defy human comprehension, incorporate mayonnaise.) But on a basic level, it ought to strike some sort of balance between tangy, sweet, and smoky.

It's one thing to know what makes a good barbecue sauce. The fun part is figuring out your preferred way of striking the balance. Do you use a bit of mustard to add a little more tang? Or do you take after Bobby Flay and stir in some Peach Pepsi to lend your sauce a fruity, caramel-esque flavor? You can experiment as much as you'd like, tinkering away in your kitchen like some kind of mad scientist pitmaster. But if you'd like a bit of direction, try gelling with some jelly.

This is a great way of differentiating your barbecue sauce from the kind you buy from the supermarket. Most commercially available sauces are tomato-based and flavored with sugar, molasses and vinegar (or, in the case of the bottled stuff, copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup). This has created a sort of standardization of barbecue sauce, which is quite handy for places like McDonald's who just want to give their customers a quick idea of what they're dipping their nuggets into. But those who want a little something more can make it themselves — and maybe even do it better.

The same qualities that make jelly such a welcome addition to a peanut butter sandwich or a slow cooker full of Swedish meatballs also make it an excellent choice for barbecue sauce. It's sweet, but sweet in a very different way from straight sugar or molasses: it has a bright, candied fruitiness to it that lets it play off the tangy, smoky flavors of barbecue sauce in a way that's familiar yet surprising. It all ends up complementing each other like ... well, like peanut butter and jelly.

The most popular option will, of course, be grape jelly, and it will certainly never steer you wrong. But variety is the spice of life, and what good is cooking without a little spice? If you'd prefer a different berry, strawberry or raspberry jam will work a charm; if you'd like a little kiss of apple without burning some applewood (or any wood at all, if you're using a propane grill), adding some apple jelly to your saucepan will do you a world of good.

If you've got other things going on in your life and don't want to stand over an oven any longer than you have to, you don't even have to make your own sauce. Just pour some out from the bottle and mix in a bit of jelly to add more depth and dimension to your glazes or dipping sauces.