You might not think that bbq sauce is an all-purpose condiment, but really, it goes with just about everything. Eggs, roasted veggies, burgers - in place of tomato sauce on pizza! It also makes a great gift for friends. If you can master a go-to bbq sauce recipe, you can save your kitchen a lot of packaging waste. All of our produce and spices are bought package-free or in bulk, and that adds up in monetary savings as well as being lower waste.

These are the packaged ingredients for this recipe, so you can see what we used.

The miso, tomatoes, and tomato paste are staples in our kitchen, and although we’re freezing/preserving our own garden’s San Marzano’s from the summer, we don’t have enough to last through the year yet. The Wortchestershire and liquid smoke last about a year-and-a-half in our kitchen, but are indispensible for this recipe. These aren’t always the brands we buy either, so don’t go out looking for them specifically. Whatever you can find, or already have in your fridge, will work just fine.

And finally, the kombucha and vinegar! This recipe is designed for the Peach Rosemary kombucha that is our September seasonal flavour, but you could change up the flavour profile with Rhubarb Rose or Lemon Ginger and still get good results.

Also, if you want to enhance the kombucha-flavour, sub the apple cider vinegar for our kombucha vinegar from the Connon’s Market!

At home, I’ll store our apple cores in a mason jar and cover them with kombucha vinegar, so the apple juices infuse. It’s a great way to repurpose the apple scraps, and the additional sugar from the apple juice often leads to a third fermentation that deepens the flavour of the vinegar (and makes a tiny, vinegar-jar-sized SCOBY pellicle).

Homemade condiments make cooking more flavourful even with limited ingredients. Take advantage of the last summer peaches and our September Seasonal, Peach Rosemary, for this smoky, delicious bbq sauce.

Peach Kombucha BBQ Sauce

Ingredients:

1 cup Peach Rosemary Kombucha
4 cloves of garlic
5 peaches
1 medium yellow onion
1 tbsp tomato paste
3-5 dried chiles (I used 1 guajillo, 2 ancho, and 3 small hot Chinese red chiles)
1 Tbsp olive oil
¼ cup miso
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup kombucha vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2-3 dashes liquid smoke
1 can San Marzano tomatoes (or plum tomatoes)
1 Tbsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp black pepper
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp mustard powder
1 Tbsp smoked paprika
Opt: fresh rosemary, white pepper

Directions:

Prepare your veggies: crush the garlic, chop the onion, de-pit and roughly chop the peaches. Also roughly chop and de-seed the chiles, leaving in more seeds if you want more spice.
Heat oil in a large non-stick or stainless steel saucepan over medium heat. Saute onion for about 5 minutes until translucent.
Add garlic, peaches, and chiles and saute for about 10 minutes until softened and fragrant. Stir in tomato paste and fry for an additional minute.
Add everything else (except the kombucha!) to the saucepan. Simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all of the veggies are soft and the sauce has thickened considerably.
Cool sauce to room temperature. You can fill a sink full of cold water or an ice bath to speed this up! It’s important to get the temperature down before adding the kombucha, because we don’t want to kill the kombucha bacteria.
When cool, blend the sauce. Drizzle in kombucha and keep blending until you reach your desired consistency. Store in the fridge for up to 4 weeks.

This batch didn’t even make it to the bottle, since we were having cauliflower wings for dinner. After baking the wings, we tossed them in the bbq sauce, baked for an additional 10 minutes, and then ate them all in less time than it took to chop the chives for the garnish. It’s that good.

I hope you try this recipe yourself!