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Apple Cider BBQ Sauce

This sauce is nice and sweet with a subtle heat at the end. We used this to baste chicken as it was grilling, but it would be great with some thick cut pork chops or slathered on a slab of ribs. If you have any left over, just allow it to cool and then store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and apple cider vinegar share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 30 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 15
Prep10 min
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced yellow onion and cook, stirring, until soft, about 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the minced garlic and cook for 1 minute until fragrant.

  4. Pour in the apple cider and simmer over medium heat until reduced by about half, about 25 minutes.

  5. Stir in the apple cider vinegar, ketchup, ground mustard, paprika, salt, cayenne pepper and brown sugar.

  6. Reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered, stirring often, for about 25 minutes until thick enough to coat a spoon.

  7. Cool slightly, then blend until smooth if desired, and store in a sealed jar in the refrigerator.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cider + apple cider vinegartop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Apple + cidertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Garlic + mustardtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, apple, cider, apple cider vinegar, ketchup, mustard):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Garlicthe original
  4. Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, apple, cider, apple cider vinegar, ketchup, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).