Ingredient Notes:
Wet Ingredients: This easy vinegar based BBQ sauce recipe starts with a mix of ingredients you probably already have at home. The wet ingredients include apple cider vinegar, ketchup, yellow mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.
Dry Ingredients: Along with the tangy flavor from the vinegar every good BBQ sauce recipe needs a little bit of sweet and a little bit of heat! That’ll come from brown sugar and chili powder. Some onion and garlic powder along with salt will also help balance out the flavors in this tangy North Carolina BBQ sauce recipe!
How to Make Carolina Barbecue Sauce:
Combine: This is one of those really simple one pot recipes where you can just dump everything in and go. Add all the wet ingredients to a medium saucepan with the dry ingredients and whisk it all together over low heat until it begins to form into the tangy BBQ sauce.
Boil: Bring the sauce to a boil, being careful to stir often so that the bottom doesn’t burn.
Thicken (Or Don’t): We like to let our sauce boil and reduce down by about a third. This makes for a thicker sauce with a bit more body. You can boil it for as long as you like – the longer you boil it, the thicker it will be. The less you boil it, the thinner it will be!
Store: When the sauce is ready you’ll need something to store it in. I recommend mason jars! Let it cool for about 20 minutes before transferring to the jars or another airtight container.
I wouldn’t recommend using this sauce right away though. It’ll thicken up a bit and take on even more flavor if you let it set it in the refrigerator first for at least a couple of hours or even a day or two!
Serving Suggestions:
Pretzel Crusted Chicken – The perfect dip for this juicy, crunchy chicken is our barbecue sauce!
Air Fryer Boneless Pork Chops – Just 10 minutes in the air fryer. Baste these with our tangy barbecue sauce or serve on the side.
Pulled Pork Sandwiches – We drizzle these with sauce and top them with dill pickle slaw. A must!
BBQ Chicken Burgers – Dry burgers? No, sir. We add BBQ sauce and cracker crumbs to the mix and they turn out fab.
