How to Make Barbecue Sauce in Japan

    The other day, I needed a barbecue brisket chopped beef sandwich in a way that only a foreigner would understand. I cooked dinner that night using the few packets of McDonald's BBQ dipping sauce I had and any smidge of sauce remaining from my last trip home, but it was unsuccessful.

    I complained to my friends and family during video chats and one of my friends had a brilliant idea. I mentioned that I might have to scour the city looking for barbecue sauce and she suggested I make my own. Surely this would be too complicated I thought, but she insisted that she was looking up easy recipes online and found most of the ingredients were already in my house and the process itself could take as little as 15 minutes. I rejoiced and set about looking at the recipes on my own. One thing they required that I did not have was Worcestershire sauce, which I picked up from the grocery store under the Katakana name oosta sauce.

Most of my ingredients. Add vinegar. You can use chili powder if you like it spicy.

    The one big difference between this and Worcestershire sauce in America is thickness. The Japanese alternative is significantly more watery, but this isn't really a problem as we're going to reduce the entirety of the sauce anyway.


I used the thin oosta sauce to rinse the last of the ketchup from the bottle.

    One thing that irritated me in the recipes was the lack of units. Most websites I found list ingredients for this and that's it, never bothering to explain that you're meant to use each ingredient to your own liking. If you're starting with a ketchup, remember that there is already some salt and sugar in there so adjust the rest of the ingredients to taste.

    To make the sauce, first you start with ketchup or tomato paste. Empty it into a frying pan. You also need salt, pepper, garlic powder, and brown sugar or molasses. Vinegar is also a must, while some suggest apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar in specific, regular white vinegar will work too.

My ingredient amounts, plus additional sugar to offset the salt. 

I combined the ingredients as instructed in most of the recipes but misread one important factor on the one recipe with units and wound up adding about four times as much salt as required. This meant that instead of having a nice 500ml of finished sauce, I would wind up with half a mason jar extra as I had to dilute the salt by adding a can of tomatoes. More ketchup would also have worked If I had had more on hand.

Taste it, then add something, then taste again. And again.

    My salty mistake also increased the cooking time. I spent at least half an hour watching it bubble and stirring it regularly while tasting it and adding things accordingly. Because salt was the problem, I had to add a lot more sugar as well. Maple syrup also would have worked. The trick here seems to be that you keep adding things little by little. As they heat up and bubble through, you should give them a taste and adjust accordingly. Eventually you wind up with a customized barbecue sauce that should be just to your liking.

Result!

Good way to reuse the ketchup container. Also, see how much darker it is?

    From what I read, the barbecue sauce should keep in the fridge for about a week or frozen for up to three months.