There are millions of recipes out there for BBQ sauce, with fancy names and long lists of ingredients. Everybody takes pride in their own particular recipe, which baffles me when they insist that I share mine with them. I don’t keep a recipe for BBQ sauce around, and I have probably never made it the same way twice anyway. It may depend on what I have on hand, I may shop ingredients for it, or I may be too tired to really care one way or the other. Chefs are tired a lot of the time. Regardless of the circumstance, it’s going to go something like this:

Ingredients:

Ketchup, 1 cup/225 ml.
Worcestershire sauce, 1/3 cup/80 ml or thereabouts.
Sugar, 1 Tablespoon or thereabouts.
Vinegar, white but any kind will do, 1/3 cup/80 ml or thereabouts.
Garlic powder, 1 Tablespoon or thereabouts.

Optional ingredients:

Tabasco or Durkees or Frank’s or Buffalo wing sauce or one of those.
Onion powder.
Liquid smoke, less is more.
Pineapple juice to replace sugar.
Tomato paste instead of ketchup, but then you really have to increase the amounts of the other stuff to make it real. You’re going to need some water too.
Tamarind paste instead of Worcestershire.
Anchovies, that’s right, anchovies.
Soy sauce, not a big fan.