The Sweet Treat You Should Be Adding To BBQ Sauce

While there are plenty of stellar barbecue sauces you can buy at the store, making your own is a terrific way to put your own signature spin on your grilled fare. It is also generally cheaper than buying store-bought sauce. There is a cornucopia of ingredients you can use to make a knock-out BBQ, but one winner that often gets overlooked is chocolate.

You may think chocolate would make your sauce too dessert-like, but using a modest amount of a dark bittersweet variety won't make it overly saccharine. Whereas milk chocolate is usually just sweet and creamy, dark chocolate has a far more complex flavor profile that elevates the other acidic and spicy ingredients in your barbecue — precisely why it is the best chocolate for a rich mole sauce. It also accents the savory flavors imparted to your grilled cuisine via the Maillard reaction, which is the chemical change that occurs in proteins that makes grilled meat so appealing.

Don't go overboard, though. Chocolate should be used as a flavoring component, not a base. A tomato foundation as typically used for many BBQ sauces is still your best option for most occasions. Think of it almost the same way you would use bourbon or Worcestershire to add depth of character without overpowering everything else in the mix. All ingredients in your sauce should play a specific role in the overall flavor, and pairing those add-ins skillfully with chocolate gives the condiment a richness that is hard to achieve alone.

When pairing ingredients with chocolate in barbecue sauce, your options are almost limitless. However, you don't want to start throwing just anything in your pantry into the mix without considering how they all work together to create a cohesive flavor profile. Every element in the sauce should have a purpose, like an orchestra creating a symphony of taste.

Chipotle and chocolate are a winning combination for barbecue sauce as they both lend complex layers of flavor. You might consider adding a touch of orange juice to incorporate citrus notes, and a bit of vanilla extract would smooth out those bold flavors with subtle sweetness. Another combination most grilled fare would welcome are barbecue stalwarts like garlic and onions blended with dark chocolate and earthy components like cumin and coriander.

Although dark chocolate tends to work best, you can swap it for unsweetened cocoa powder if that is all you have on hand. Blend it with sweet ingredients like molasses or brown sugar, along with spicy elements like chili powder and cayenne pepper. The result: a sweet and spicy barbecue sauce accented with a sophisticated undertone of cocoa. Whatever combination of ingredients you use with chocolate in your creation, the reality is that you can't taste test it too often. Keep tasting and working in as many flavors as necessary to allow the chocolate to be noticeable yet almost tucked away in the background, enhancing all the other elements in the barbecue sauce.