Dr Pepper Barbecue Sauce

For at least five years, this recipe for Dr Pepper barbecue sauce has been taking up valuable real estate inside my special tried-and-true-favorites recipe book.

Which is pretty darn nervy because I have never even once actually made it. 

But for all these years, I've had a special place in my heart for this sauce. Whenever I'm giving this binder a good clearing out, and pitching the recipes that I don't truly love, I let this one stay, just because of that key ingredient: 

Dr Pepper.

My family proudly boasts of a longstanding obsession with this drink of 23 flavors. Back in his wild youth, my husband used to buy an old-fashioned glass bottle of the good Doctor every afternoon as he walked home from high school. Strolling along the sidewalk in all kinds of Ohio weather, he would drink either in icy sips or overheated gulps. And each day, as he polished off his delicious beverage, he would toss the bottle into the neighbor's yard as he walked by. 

Always the same neighbor. Always the same yard.

I mean, he wasn't exactly throwing Molotov cocktails, and this was the sixties after all. But I have always been a little bit shocked by his naughtiness and total lack of conscience. Don't let his pocket protectors fool you, people. He was quite the bad boy. 

Would you like to check out a few photos of my husband during his rebellious youth? Go here.

Years passed. My mom quickly picked up on my husband's passion for Dr Pepper and whenever we came in to visit, she would stock up on plenty of the good stuff to keep him hydrated through the hot and sticky Midwestern summers. 

As they grew, my daughters fell in love with Dr Pepper too. Countless family snacking sessions were punctuated with the snap! and fizzzz of a fresh can being opened and poured between two or three glasses as sisters shared a drink. 

And I worked through a decade-long devotion to Diet Dr Pepper which I considered then and now to be truly the nectar of the gods. 

Around here, drinking Dr Pepper is a time-honored family tradition, so when I stumbled across this recipe for a DP-based barbecue sauce, I printed it, filed it, and waited for the right day to give it a try.

Though I never expected I'd wait five years, that day finally came. Today.

* * * * *

Ingredients:

1 cup minced onion

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups Dr Pepper

1 can crushed tomatoes, about 15 ounces

1/2 cup orange juice

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup honey

1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne

salt to taste

This is the kind of recipe that makes me grateful for my pantry. I keep a fairly wide collection of spices, vinegars, oils, hot sauces, and sweeteners on board so that when a new recipe strikes, odds are good that I already have what I need. 

Sure enough, all I needed to buy for this barbecue sauce was a fresh bottle of Dr Pepper, and more orange juice so my fourth-born would not find a practically empty OJ bottle rattling around in the fridge where her favorite beverage is supposed to be. 

* * * * *

Directions:

1. Heat the vegetable oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and saute for 4-5 minutes, stirring often. 

2. When the onions are just beginning to brown, add the remaining ingredients and stir well to combine. Simmer for 30 minutes. 

3. Pour the sauce into a blender or food processor and puree it until it is smooth. I used an immersion blender which worked, as usual, like a charm.

4. Put the sauce into a saucepan, bring to a simmer and continue to simmer, uncovered, for 1-2 hours.

The sauce will store for several weeks in the fridge

Source: Simply Recipes

Now I happened to whip up a double batch of this sauce today, so about half of it went into the fridge as the recipe suggests.

But the other half marched directly out to the waiting hot coals of my Weber grill and was put to work on a mess of chicken tenderloins. 

The finished product was magical. 

So magical in fact, that I dove into my dinner with abandon, completely forgetting that I wanted to catch a photo of my full plate.

Here then, is most, but not all, of my plate of Dr Pepper Barbecue Sauce chicken.

Trust me, I will not wait five more years to make it again.