Elevate Your BBQ Sauce With An Unexpected Zingy Fruit

When it comes to American barbecue sauce, flavor preferences can be a little divisive. Regional barbecue fans are often dyed in the wool. They know what they like, from sweet molasses to mouth-puckering vinegar: Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, the Carolinas, Texas, and Alabama. But whatever your preference, even if it's not particularly nuanced, this one unexpected ingredient will expand the flavor of your sauce with some bright, fruity tang. Using cherries in your next barbecue sauce will add incredible depth with very little work.

Because cherries are both sweet and sour, they pair beautifully with barbecue, no matter the prominent flavor — sweet and syrupy, spicy, or tangy vinegar. Use them in your favorite homemade recipe or add them to a bottled sauce. If you're partial to a particular style, you can find some great regional sauces on Amazon or nail down your favorite store-bought barbecue from the local grocery store. Either fresh or frozen cherries will work, just make sure they're pitted, of course. With a couple of added tricks, you'll have your own quick and easy bespoke cherry BBQ in no time.

Most fresh cherries you find at the grocery store are sweet cherries. From dark red Bings and Chelans to bright red Tulare and Lambert varieties, to the lighter yellow, orange, and red Rainier cherries, sweet cherries are generally larger and juicier than their tart cousins. To add more sweetness to your barbecue sauce, choose sweet cherries that are plump and darker in color (by individual variety) because they'll have a higher sugar content. If you'd prefer to add more tart flavor, go with smaller sweet cherries or almost any sour variety.

Rather than just adding the cherries to a cold bottled sauce, it's better to heat the sauce in a pan (as Bobby Flay does with his revamped barbecue sauce), and then add the cherries. When the cherries cook in the sauce the sugars will consolidate and bring out more sweetness, and the cherry flavor will permeate the sauce and spread more evenly. Add your cherries whole, smashed, or chopped — you can even try this trick with cherry preserves. The result is a smokier, zingier sauce, leaning sweet or tart, depending on your cherries.