Bourbon Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce
This recipe, of course, is neither of those. Indeed, I'll admit that I made it not in any of the idyllic scenes above but rather while listening to Def Leppard, Harper barking incessantly at joggers outside, following a rushed trip to the grocer. But it is a perfect addition to any number of long-cooking Sunday mains that will do just fine, from slices of chicken roasted in a cast iron skillet to a slowly smoked, carefully shredded pork shoulder started before the sun peeked out from behind the horizon. This sauce is tangy, sweet, smoky, hot, and complex, and so simple and quick that there's no need to ever think about a plastic bottle sourced from some strangely sticky grocery store shelf. It's also far less in-your-face than my other favorite sauce.
The basic recipe comes from The New York Times.
Bourbon Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce
2/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons bourbon
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon smoked paprika*
1 healthy pinch fermented cayenne pepper flakes
Salt & Pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and simmer until slightly thickened.
* Perhaps we need to talk about paprika. If you're like me, your formative experience with this spice was its use as a fine red dust applied decoratively to deviled eggs...and nothing more. For most grocery store paprika, this is appropriate. But a fresh, quality paprika—deeply smoked and so red it makes Mars blush—will change your life. I like this one, but you'll have to cut back on the pepper flakes if you use it: it's hot.
