This Quick and Easy Vegan Barbecue Sauce is made with easy to find ingredients you probably have right now in your pantry or refrigerator. Seriously, you won’t believe how easy this is!
Is anyone else rarely impressed with store bought barbecue sauce?
A couple of complaints I have:
- Most are made with high fructose corn syrup.
- The higher quality ones are WAY too expensive for my budget.
- They just don’t usually taste good, unless you splurge on the expensive bottles, which I never do.
However, while I love to cook and create recipes, I’m also quite the lazy cook at times and want to keep things as simple as possible. Especially when my twins have back to back basketball games and my toddler is screaming, “MAMA” for the 1000th time of the day while I’m trying to put dinner together. *sigh*
So the other day I was making my Instant Pot Barbecue Jackfruit and decided to come up with my own SUPER easy, delicious barbecue sauce. I didn’t want it to require any chopping or cooking (not even garlic pressing!), just throwing some stuff in a bowl.
Which is what I did, and I’m thrilled with the results!!
You only need 7 ingredients:
Ketchup
Molasses
Brown sugar OR maple syrup
Apple cider vinegar
Soy Sauce (use tamari for gluten free)
Vegan Worcerstershire sauce &
Sriracha
Put them in a bowl and whisk! Done.
You can use this Quick and Easy Vegan Barbecue Sauce in a variety of recipes:
Make some barbecue tofu, or The Best BBQ Sandwich with Soy Curls.
Make these veggie burgers, add the barbecue sauce and some pineapple slices. Yum!
Use in Instant Pot BBQ Jackfruit.
Drizzle on baked potatoes.
Dip these Easy Baked Tofu Nuggets in this sauce.
If you make this recipe, let me know how it goes! Rate it, leave a comment and tag a photo @noracooksvegan on Instagram. Enjoy!
Quick and Easy Vegan Barbecue Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 cups organic ketchup*
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1/4 cup brown sugar or pure maple syrup
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce*
- 2 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire sauce*
- 2 teaspoons Sriracha, or other hot sauce
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a medium sized bowl and whisk to combine. Makes about 2 1/2 cups or 18 ounces, the same amount in an average bottle of store bought barbecue sauce. Store in the refrigerator up to a week.
- Use this recipe for Instant Pot BBQ Jackfruit, on veggie burgers, BBQ tofu or tempeh or even with these Easy Baked Tofu Nuggets.
Notes
- Look for a ketchup without high fructose corn syrup.
- For Gluten Free, use gluten free tamari instead of the low sodium soy sauce.
- For the vegan Worcestershire sauce, I usually buy Annie's brand. If you can't find it, you can leave it out.
Omg Nora you did it again. Delicious! Best BBQ sauce I’ve ever tasted. I make my own ketchup so used that versus store bought as base. This is incredible. When searching Google for vegan recipes whenever a “Nora Cooks” recipe shows in search, I always pick that one – a guaranteed success. Thanks for all you do and for sharing with us all.
Just tried making this for the first time–it came out delicious! Personal adjustments: can’t do tomatoes or chilis so subbed an improvised pumpkin “ketchup” and left out the sriracha; didn’t have Worcestershire sauce so skipped in accordance with note 3. Thanks for the simple and tasty recipe.
Hi Nora. How well does this recipe freeze?
It freezes very well!
Love this. I added some liquid smoke and altered the proportions a bit but the ingredients do well together.
Made a pulled “pork” sandwich with vegan coke slaw. A big winner!
Thank you Nora. You are my go to web site for the best vegan recipes
This is a dup for McD’s BBQ (to my taste buds) but so much healthier and better!! Wow! Lick the bowl good.
This is really good with tofu
Hi Nora
I’m just looking at your ‘Quick and Easy Vegan Barbecue Sauce’ recipe and the first ingredient on the list is “organic ketchup”!
I’m English so I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “ketchup”. To us its a tomato-based condiment but quite often things get lost in translation when they cross the Atlantic!
Cheers
Nick
Hi Nick. You are correct, ketchup is the tomato-based condiment! It is also called Catsup. I hope this helps! Enjoy the BBQ sauce!
Loving the barbecue sauce recipe, I’m not sure if it’s the amount 1/4 cup or if my apple cider vinegar is old but it’s a bit vinegary. Any suggestions how to fix, thought about making another batch without vinegar and add to the current batch. I love all your recipes, I also made the crispy tofu many times, my husband’s favorite. Thanks Nora.
Love this BQ sauce. Would love to keep it longer than a week however. Can it be frozen? I used on BQ tempeh and delicious
I’m so happy you love the BBQ sauce, Surae! Yes, you can freeze it in an airtight container for at least 2-3 months.
This looks perfect for some cashew fruit meat from CajúLove that I’m trying out.
Being vegan, I use a lot of cashews and have wondered what happens to the fruit, which is about 10x the size of the single cashew that grows from it. I don’t like jackfruit but this cashew fruit has great body and texture. It’s new enough on the market that they don’t flavor it, so I gave it a go.
The first time I made my own sauce for it, but don’t have your knack for inventing recipes, Nora, which is why I LOVE and appreciate your site so much! Next time I will use your BBQ sauce recipe, and I bet it will be so tasty.
Thank you, Nora!
So easy, so fast, and so delicious. Tangy – perfect! Only thing I subbed was date paste for the maple syrup. This is now my go to barbeque sauce recipe.
Hi Carole. I’m thrilled this is your go-to Barbecue Sauce recipe! Thank you for taking time to share your wonderful feedback and review!
I made it with sugar free syrup and no added sugar catsup, and it’s great: sweet and tangy.
Thanks for sharing your review! I’m glad you loved the sauce!
I needed a quick and I mean quick barbecue sauce to put on my grilled vegan cheese-mashed white beans-avocado sandwich which was already cooking. The only barbecue sauce we had in the house had gasp high fructose corn syrup ew in it so I googled “quick vegan barbecue sauce” and this recipe popped up. I chose it because it needed no cooking just whisking together the ingredients. It is taking me longer to write this review than it did to make the sauce and eat the sandwich! This sauce is absolutely delicious, just sweet enough and just tangy enough. This will be my go-to sauce 4ever!!!
Hi Diana! Wow, thanks for sharing your fantastic review! I am so thrilled this is now your go to BBQ sauce!
Hi Nora! I’m just wondering what type of molasses do you use and what kind of ketchup (with sugar, sugar-free…)?
Blackstrap molasses, and I just use regular ketchup that does contain sugar. You could use sugar free ketchup if you wanted, but the sauce won’t be as sweet. Thank you!
Very easy to make and tasty. Makes enough to last so I put some in freezer. I also added more hot side because I like it spicy.
Would recommend. Tasty tasty!
Hi Nicola. Thank you!
What is a serving amount please?
There are 8 servings total, so once serving is about 1/4 cup.
We absolutely love this recipe. We never ever buy store bought bbq sauce anymore and we use it on everything! Thank you for all your wonderful recipes Nora!!!
That’s so great to hear!!
Made it twice now.
It is that good! I have just one question? I have never tried one of your recipes that wasn’t amazing. My friends all use your site now and I have referenced you on vegans on Twitter. How do you do it?
You’re too kind. 🙂 Thank you!!
The ONLY bbq sauce I will eat! My husband LOVES bbq sauce and I’ve never found a store bought sauce that I liked. So I thought I would give this a try. This is what bbq sauce is supposed to taste like, friends! I could drink this it’s so good. I put it on everything! It’s the best bbq sauce I’ve ever had and my husband agrees! Thank you, Nora!
You’re so welcome!! Thanks for the great comment!
THIS IS THE BEST BBQ SAUCE I HAVE EVER HAD AAAA! SO DELICIOUS THANK YOU! I made the baked tofu with it and it’s amazing!
That’s so great! Thanks for the comment!
Nora, I’m wondering if it can be frozen? There are just the 2 of us, so we would not be able to eat it fast enough to store it in the refrigerator.
Yes, this could be frozen. Hope you enjoy it!
Ketchup is loaded with high fructose corn syrup too. Why not start with canned tomatoes
I generally use ketchup that does not contain high fructose corn syrup, and I use it because it makes this recipe very fast and easy. You are certainly welcome to find another recipe using canned tomatoes or from scratch, this one is just very easy and delicious. 🙂
Wow!!! Now I need to make that immediately!
I absolutely love this barbecue sauce I will never buy it in the store again! I added a teaspoon of smoked paprika… Thank you so much! I also have the barbecue jackfruit in the instant pot so quick and easy this recipe. It’s the first time I’ve ever cooked with Jackfruit so I’m very excited…
That’s so great to hear! Thanks so much for the feedback! I hope you enjoyed the jackfruit with it. 🙂 Smoked paprika is pretty much amazing in anything!
This barbecue sauce was really good and easy to make. Perfect amount of sweet and smoky.
This is just what l needed for my Burritos tomorrow. Sounds delicious thank you for posting.?
Thanks Karen! I hope they turn out well! 🙂