This healthy apple & cinnamon BBQ sauce is sugar-free, paleo, Whole30 and vegan-friendly. It’s a perfect homemade condiment for pork ribs, burgers, meatballs or your favourite veggie sausages.
When it comes to condiments such as ketchup and barbecue sauce, it’s always more convenient to buy a ready-made bottle. But, most commercially produced sauces are full of added sugar or corn syrup, ‘natural flavours’ and other additives and preservatives.
If you’ve never made your own barbecue sauce or ketchup, I really encourage you to give it a go. It’s much healthier and is actually quite simple to make. You can store it in the fridge for a couple of weeks. More paleo & sugar-free sauces and condiments here.
This paleo barbecue sauce is my take on the traditional recipe with the addition of sweet apples and warm cinnamon. It has no added sugar, just the sweetness from the apples. I made it especially for glazing roasted pork ribs but you can use it as a condiment with any meat.
It’s lovely with lighter-coloured meat such as pork, chicken, and duck, but I can also tell you that it is damn fine on a grass-fed beef burger with some crispy bacon on top.
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Ingredients
- 1 medium onion diced
- 1 teaspoon coconut oil or ghee, heaped
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 2 medium apples tart-sweet, peeled and cubed
- 2 slices of fresh ginger 1/2 teaspoon of ginger powder can be used instead
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 clove garlic roughly diced
- 1 cinnamon stick or 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
- 1/3 teaspoon red chilli pepper or cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander seed
- 1 teaspoon paprika powder
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons Tamari gluten-free soy sauce or coconut aminos
- 1/4 cup water
Instructions
- Add the onion, coconut oil and salt to a small saucepan and sauté over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, until onion has softened slightly.
- Add the apples, ginger and bay leaf and stir for a couple of minutes. Then add the rest of the ingredients, stir through and bring to boil. Once at boil, bring the heat down to low simmering, cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes, or until the apples have softened completely. Add a little more water if the mixture gets too thick.
- Transfer everything to a food processor but remove the bay leaf, ginger and cinnamon stick. Process until smooth and taste for salt. Add a little more salt, lemon juice or chilli to your liking.
- Then transfer the puree to a sieve. Push the mixture through the sieve into a clean bowl using a spoon and discard any leftover fibres or larger chunks.
- Store the sauce in a clean, air-tight jar or bottle for up to two weeks in the fridge.
That is a great idea to use apples. I have used pineapples in a BBQ sauce before and it was a great natural sweetener.