The Texas BBQ Forum

Hi, wanting to make a sauce in Texan style (less sweet, less thick and more acid) I tried to make the famous sweet sauce by Franklin, as reported in his book "A Meat-smoking Manifesto", but the amount of cumin I was seemed excessive (1 tablespoon), in fact the taste was too strong on everything else.
I found this recipe on other sites where in fact the amount of cumin is only 1 tsp .... Have any of you tried this recipe?

1 tsp version:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/frankli ... 77166.html

Original as reported in the book:
https://www.eater.com/2016/6/19/1197285 ... uce-recipe

When ya "Git'er Done" let us know what you did

I tried the first time the book version, using 1 tablespoon of cumin...after i reduce to 1/3 (about 1 tsp). Today I read that there is another version of the recipe released by the same Franklin with that quantity...

Thanks for the post, Roipnol. The recipe looks really good. Vaguely similar to my family's S. Texas sauce recipe but with more flavor depth. I'm going to have to give it a try myself.

I grew up on the family recipe and can't stand overly sweet sauces because of that.

Decided to try this myself. I started with the sweet sauce, and haven't made it to the regular (cookbook version) yet. They are two different sauces BTW.

Either "sweet" is relative or I goofed up on my measurements. I tried to make a smaller 1 cup sample batch. Man this was about like using a well aged bottle of Tabasco as a BBQ sauce. Definitely too much chili powder for my liking. Anybody else tried this yet? I'm curious if Franklin's sauces are supposed to have that much fire to them. My family's recipe is savory, and has a bit of heat and tang, but not like this.

rms827 wrote:Either "sweet" is relative or I goofed up on my measurements. I tried to make a smaller 1 cup sample batch. Man this was about like using a well aged bottle of Tabasco as a BBQ sauce. Definitely too much chili powder for my liking. Anybody else tried this yet? I'm curious if Franklin's sauces are supposed to have that much fire to them. My family's recipe is savory, and has a bit of heat and tang, but not like this.

I have’t tried the recipe but don’t remember the sauce in his restaurant being all that spicy. Maybe another misprint?

allenayres wrote:

rms827 wrote:Either "sweet" is relative or I goofed up on my measurements. I tried to make a smaller 1 cup sample batch. Man this was about like using a well aged bottle of Tabasco as a BBQ sauce. Definitely too much chili powder for my liking. Anybody else tried this yet? I'm curious if Franklin's sauces are supposed to have that much fire to them. My family's recipe is savory, and has a bit of heat and tang, but not like this.

I have’t tried the recipe but don’t remember the sauce in his restaurant being all that spicy. Maybe another misprint?

More likely I just goofed measuring the cayenne. I expected some heat from the "standard" sauce but not the sweet one. Thanks for the confirmation though. Now that I'm more certain it was my error, I'll give it another try and see how it goes.

OK,so VERY slow getting back to trying the Franklin's recipe again, BUT I did earlier this month. Here's my after action report:

I did indeed goof my measurements last time. The sauce was flavorful with mild heat. Texans probably won't find it hot at all. For me it was just enough to add pizazz. More wussy non-Texans might find it a bit too spicy. For me, it needed a little more depth to it's flavor profile though. My family's sauce recipe is fairly similar, for example, but it adds a little lemon juice also for a little tang and to balance out the heat. It was good just not exceptional. The non-sweet recipe is virtually identical, but has 4x the cayenne, so I expect it's got a little kick to it, LOL.

One last interesting note... We had leftovers 2 days later and I used some of the remaining sauce. The heat level had gone up noticeably in that time.

This is my go to. Everyone loves it. It's one that Franklin makes in one of his videos. Much better than the one in the book. It's fairly thick, and is best served warm. He used a ton of butter in his video, way too much. So I cut it back from a one full stick, to 1/4 of stick and it's more than enough.

In fact I just made a batch last night for this weekend's Super Bowl party. I strained out the onions this time since I plan to use it in squeeze bottles.



Franklins BBQ Sauce

1/4 stick butter
1/2 yellow onion (chopped)
1 1/2 cup ketchup (no high fructose corn syrup)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3 oz brown sugar
tsp+ salt
tsp+ pepper
tsp- chili powder
tsp- garlic powder
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Melt butter in large saucepan
add chopped onions, sautée until translucent
Add in rest of ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes or longer if needed.

Looks good