I Like it Spicy and Sweet....Making Homemade Barbecue Sauce

Barbecue sauce is soo easy to make! I made mine one day after realizing I did not have any in my pantry. I just experimented with ketchup and brown sugar. Today I do not use ketchup but tomato sauce instead, it tends to not have that ketchuppy (is that a word?) taste. I make a couple of different versions one with honey one without. This is the non honey version.

Its the end the month for us and we were low on meat choices, either fish or porksteak. I took out the pork steak. Pork steak is an inexpensive and versatile cut of pork. I use it to make chile verde or chile con carne, but I just felt like grilling it. I served this with some white rice and a cold spicy blackbean and corn  salad .

Ingredients

My Spicy and Sweet Barbecue Sauce

1c. of tomato sauce

1/2 c. of brown sugar

1tbsp molasses

1tbsp soy sauce

1tbsp apple cider vinegar

1tbsp vietnamese garlic chili paste

1tbsp of  liquid hickory smoke

1tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp cumin powder

mix everything in a saucepan and let simmer for about 30 minutes till it thickens

Spicy Blackbean and Corn Salad

1 can of black beans rinsed

1 can of corn rinsed

2 serrano chilis deveined and seeded

1/3 cup of diced red onion

1/2 avacado diced

1 green tomato sliced thick and grilled for 1 min on each side diced

juice of 1 lime

Mix everything together and let chill this is even better the longer it chills.. great the next day!

Video Recipe

Tri-tip 101

I love tri-tip, it is solely responsible for keeping me from being a vegan...ok I love NY strip steaks too.
This is the first step to preparing a great tasting tri-tip. Tri-tip is big in California and I am not sure if it has made its way further east yet but a few years ago no one out of Cali knew what it was. When I lived in Minnesota people were like tri-tip whats that? Well it is from the cut of meat known as the brisket and it is generally a fattier piece of roast, which makes it ideal for us Cali barbecuers, is that a word? Anyway I have been loving me some tri-tip for over 20 years now. I was first introduced to it by working my first job in the now closed Monty's Liquor on Howard Road in Madera. It was my job to prep the numerous tri-tip we would go through on a Friday. We grilled inside on a large grill in the Deli Kitchen. This is the "secret Monty's Tri-tip recipe" I call it mine but of course I just stole it from them...
So here we go...on the way to tri-tip heaven!

Ingredients

1 bottle of liquid Hickory Smoke

salt

pepper

garlic powder

1  3lb tri-tip

Don't make the mistake of using garlic salt...use powder only, and you will want the shakerful because there will be a lot of shaking going on.

This is the first video of prep it shows no cooking. Cooking video will follow tomorrow.

Prep video