I was on vacation last week and The Mister and I took a trip to Corpus Christi to see my family. Before we left, we made a quick stop at Sprouts. We have one in the area but we have to drive 45 minutes to get to it so we decided to stop in.
P.S. Whenever we travel we try to bring an ice chest with us just in case we run into some rare, perishable things we want to bring home.
Sprouts had their Black Sweet Cherries for $1.98 a pound. I couldn’t help but buy two pounds as they are triple that amount locally.
We got home and I kind of forgot about them for a few days. Then I remembered they were in the refrigerator and started thinking about what I could do with them. I’m not exactly sure WHY but I thought, “I should make some BBQ sauce out of them”. Who looks at cherries and thinks BBQ sauce?
LOL! Apparently,I DO!
I found a really great recipe on Pinterest by Nick from Macheesmo. You should check out his blog. I’m loving it!
I did change my version of it up a bit because I didn’t have some things in my pantry and I also nixed some of the sugar.
Here’s how I did mine:
Sweet Cherry BBQ Sauce
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 pound sweet cherries, pitted
• 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 1 cup water
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar
• Juice of one large navel orange
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 tsp dried chipotle pepper
1. Cook your chopped onion in the butter until it’s transparent and soft.
2. Add all the other ingredients.
3. Let simmer for about 20 minutes.
4. Blend the mixture down and it’s ready to be used.
5. Store your BBQ sauce in the refrigerator.
I stored my BBQ sauce in some weck jars and I’ve been using it to bake chicken andeven as a sauce for meatballs. It’s really good stuff.
**I let my mixture cool a little and then I used a hand blender to blend up my BBQ sauce. It was thick and saucy and wonderful**
I also pitted my own cherries with this contraption.
It was so easy and I pitted a pound of cherries in about 5 minutes.
I love that I’ve found a BBQ sauce that I can MAKE. I love knowing what is going into the things I eat. I can pronounce everything that makes up my ingredients list and that makes me so happy!
This BBQ sauce is a little sweet, tangy and even smoky and will be great on chicken, beef, and really anything that you could think of that has BBQ sauce on it. I think I’m gonna use some in my veggie chili next week. I’ll let you know how it turns out!
