Get ready for grilling season (or anytime you need a saucy addition to dinner) with this collection of our favorite barbecue sauces. From sweet to spicy to vinegary and all combinations thereof, we’ve got you covered. Or slathered, if you prefer.
Texas-Style Barbecue Sauce
: Aimee Buxton
1/9
Ridiculously easy to make yet complex as heck in taste. Slightly sweet with only a hint of heat. Kid-tested and adult-approved.
Recipe
Vinegar Barbecue Sauce
: Wyatt McSpadden
2/9
This tangy vinegar-based barbecue sauce, typical of eastern Carolina-style 'cue, is exactly what you want—nay, need—for anything you pull from your smoker or grill.
Recipe
Chipotle Maple Barbecue Sauce
: David Leite
3/9
This indescribably must-have-more-of-this sauce boasts the complex sweetness of maple syrup and the smoky spice of chipotle peppers. Slather it at will.
Recipe
North Carolina Barbecue Sauce
: Quentin Bacon
4/9
This isn't your typical sweetly gloppy barbecue sauce to squirt onto burgers or dogs. This is thinner and tangier than most and it's something sorta special.
Recipe
Spicy Bourbon BBQ Sauce
: Paige Green
5/9
The secret ingredient to this spicy sauce? Nope. Not bourbon. We said secret. It's smoked ketchup. (Yup. You heard correctly.) Bacon, too.
Recipe
Alabama White BBQ Sauce
: Ken Goodman
6/9
A creamy mayo-based barbecue sauce that's just as enticing as any of its tomato-based counterparts...due in no small part to its surprise jolt of mustard and horseradish.
Recipe
Bobby Flay’s Barbecue Sauce
: Ben Fink
7/9
This sweet and spicy little number wooed us from our very first spoonful, banishing bottled barbecue sauce forever from our pantries.
Recipe
North Carolina Vinegar Barbecue Sauce
: Time Inc. Books
8/9
A little tangy and not too sweet, this North Carolina style barbecue sauce is juuuuuuuuuust right.
Recipe
Korean BBQ Sauce
: Rebecca Lindamood
9/9
This Korean BBQ sauce is as easy and as authentic as can be. It's also sticky, sweet, spicy, gingery, garlicky, and exponentially more spectacular than anything store-bought.
Recipe
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