Sauces & dressings · Condiments & glazes

BBQ sauce

Name: BBQ sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 17 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 1 cup ketchup; 1/3 cup packed brown sugar; 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar; 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce; 2 tsp Dijon mustard; 2 tsp paprika; 1 tsp garlic powder; 1 tsp onion powder; 3/4 tsp black pepper; 1/4 cup water

Kansas City-style from the pantry in fifteen minutes: ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar and smoke-leaning spices simmered to gloss. Sweeter than you remember — now you can read exactly how much.

Time: 17 min (5 prep + 12 cook)
Servings: 12
Per serving: 51 kcal
Protein: 0 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 cup ketchup240 g
1/3 cup packed brown sugar70 g
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar45 g
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce15 g
2 tsp Dijon mustard10 g
2 tsp paprika5 g
1 tsp garlic powder3 g
1 tsp onion powder3 g
3/4 tsp black pepper2 g
1/4 cup water60 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Whisk everything in a small pot and bring to a lazy simmer.
Ten minutes uncovered, stirring now and then, until glossy and thick enough to coat a spoon.
Taste and steer: more vinegar pulls it Carolina, more sugar pulls it Kansas City.
Cool and jar. A month in the fridge, easily.

Why make what costs three dollars a bottle?

Because now you know: a third of a cup of brown sugar plus ketchup's own sugar is the recipe, in yours and the bottle's alike. Homemade doesn't dodge that — it just lets you decide the number instead of the label deciding.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Concentrated sugar, with little protein or fiber to slow it down; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

3% of kcal

62% water

6 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

66%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 614 kcal goes into the pot, 453 g of ingredients comes out as ~420 g of food → 146 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 146
Protein: (3%); 1 g
Fat: (4%); 1 g
Carbohydrates: (93%); 35 g
of which sugar: 29 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 622 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More sauces & dressings

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.