Homemade Barbecue Sauce

Last week, I made some barbecue chicken breasts in the oven. Grace loves chicken so I like to keep it made and in the fridge for her. It makes it easy for me on nights when she can't eat what we're eating.


We usually use store bought barbecue sauce but we ran out a couple weeks ago. The store was sold out of our favorite brand (Famous Dave's Sweet & Zesty) and I didn't care for the brand that Joe bought instead. It had way too much smoke flavor for my taste. 

I checked out my Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (it's seen better days) and found a basic recipe. I was happy that I had all of the ingredients needed. As always, I adapted this recipe to suit our tastes and added or switched some of the ingredients.

Easy Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients:

1 C. ketchup
1/4 C. apple cider vinegar
1/2 C. water
1 1/2 T. brown sugar
1 T. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
1 T. brown mustard
3 T. finely diced onion
1 T. finely diced celery
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 oz. liquid smoke
several dashes of Tabasco Chipotle Pepper Sauce
ground black pepper to taste

Method:

In a small sauce pot, stir together all ingredients. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring often. After sauce comes to a boil, reduce heat and simmer (uncovered) until sauce is thick, stirring often.


A couple of years ago, I never would have made my own barbecue sauce.  I wouldn't have even thought to do it.  I'm so happy that I made this sauce, it was so easy and so much cheaper than the store bought sauces.   I think we'll be sticking with this sauce for more daily use and save our favorites store bought brand as a treat. 
I'll be linking to the following blogs this week: 

• Homemaker Monday
• Motivate Me Monday
• Tasty Tuesday
• Tuesdays at the Table
• Tempt My Tummy Tuesday
• Kitchen Tip Tuesday
• Works For Me Wednesday
• Make It From Scratch
• Food On Friday
• Frugal Friday

Tutorial: Make Your Own Veggie Broth in the Crock-Pot

I've said before that my Crock-Pot is one of my most-used appliances in my kitchen.  Only to be beat by my constantly running dishwasher! 

After making my own chicken broth (I'll post about that soon...I promise) last month, I decided to find out if vegetable broth can be made in the Crock-Pot.  Sure enough, it can!  Yay! 

Searching the Internet, I found a lot of information for making homemade vegetable broth.  Rachael wrote this post for Buffalo Frugal Living Examiner and it seemed to have the best information for me.  After reading her post and seeing how simple it was to make veggie broth, I wanted to jump right in and make it that very second.  But, it wouldn't have been a very good vegetable broth, since I didn't have any veggie scraps saved. 

I decided to share my  vegetable broth making experience with you and was even prepared with the camera close by  and took step by step photos of the entire process! 

I started by saving all of my veggie scraps while preparing recent meals.  I saved everything:  carrot ends and peels, potato peels, celery (tops, bottoms and leaves) onion peels and tops, bell pepper tops, garlic peels, broccoli stems, cabbage cores, etc. 

I stored the scraps in gallon size Ziplock Freezer Bags in my basement freezer. 

I poured the frozen** scraps into my Crock-Pot.  My oval Crock-Pot only needed one of the gallon-sized bags to fill it.  This particular bag was full of scraps from carrots, peppers, celery, cabbage and onions. 

**Remember:  if you are using cold or frozen vegetable scraps, to start off with a room temperature Crock-Pot.  If it's pre-heated, it may crack when the cold items are added.

I added COLD water to about 1/2 inch from the top.  Then I covered it and cooked on LOW for about 13 hours. 

After letting it simmer through the night, this is what it looked like in the morning.  I took the lid off and let it cool for about half an hour. 

I placed  a large bowl in my sink and then placed my colander inside of the bowl to strain the veggies from the broth. 

I used a large ladle to scoop out most of the veggies and broth and let it strain through the colander and into the bowl until there was enough removed so that I could pour it through the strainer without making much of a mess! 

After that, I just had to pour it into my large measuring cup to see just how much broth was made!  It's past the 8 cup line!  So, that's about 4 cans of broth.  Four less cans I have to buy not only means that I saved money, but four less cans to throw away recycle. 

My next step will be to pour it into Ziplock Freezer Bags when it's finished cooling.  I'll store them in 2 cup portions and freeze flat on the shelf of my kitchen freezer.  Once they are solid, they will stack nicely in my basement freezer! 

I will be sharing this blog post with the following blog carnivals this week: 

• 
  
  Frugal Friday
• 
  
  Food On Fridays