What's The Best Kansas City–Style BBQ Sauce?

Barbecue sauce can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But for a huge chunk of at least this country, barbecue sauce means Kansas City style. And here to walk me through a few options for Kansas City barbecue sauce is Jack. Yeah, this is going to be super fun. We tasted 11 different Kansas City barbecue sauces. The definition here, as most people understand it, is kind of tomato molasses forward. OK. Although that's not actually the history. Now, if you want to start enjoying barbecue sauce while I give you a little history, the original sauce was just lard, cayenne and vinegar. Sounds great. Yeah. Dates back to the early 1900s and eventually tomatoes and sugar. That can be in the form of ketchup, molasses. The national brands that we think of as barbecue sauce. So KC Masterpiece, Bullseye, Heinz, Sweet Baby Ray's. They all are basically what I would call Kansas City style barbecue sauces because they've got that sweet and smoky thing going, as well as herbs and spices. So I've chosen four sauces that are pretty different from each other. Really different. So we tasted both some of the national sauces that I just mentioned, as well as local brands from restaurants in Kansas City. Because, of course, you can now mail order barbecue sauce wherever you live in the country. The restaurant sauces tend to be more herbaceous, more vinegary than the sort of sweet, smoky national brands that we think of as Kansas City barbecue sauce. Impressions of these four sauces here. Big differences. This one tastes like straight out of the bottle supermarket sauce for me. It's molasses, it's sweet, it's clingy and it has lots of smoke flavor already built into it. Okay. This one has a chili profile that I actually really like. It's not too sweet. Definitely some heat in there. I actually really appreciate that. This one definitely feels like it has some sort of a sweetener in there, but I like that there's a celery salt flavor that keeps coming through that I really, really like. And then this one is the saltiest of the bunch. I would say it's still a really good flavor. Tastes a little smoked, but not like a liquid smoke. I would say these three, I really, I would eat any of these. This one's my, edged out as my favorite. This one is probably my least favorite, but. And as usual, your tasting notes are perfect. This is bullseye. This is, you know, a classic kind of sugar and smoke forward supermarket sauce. You know, we like it, especially for somebody who wants a lot of smoke coming from the barbecue sauce. Right. Let's look at this one, which you really love this. This is Gates. You know, there are lots of famous, and I would say at this point, Gates is probably one of the two most famous places you've probably been there. Landmark. Yeah, landmark. Yes, I have been there a couple of times. And I would say of the local sauces, it was fairly on the sweet side, but not as sweet as the national brands. Okay. And then this one. So this is Jones. This is two sisters, family restaurant that dates back to the 70s. So not quite as old as Gates barbecue. This is sort of jammy. Our tasters were like pineapple. Now, there's no pineapple in the ingredient list, but like fruity and jammy kept on coming up in the taste. Is there honey in it? I don't know. There does seem like there's a lot of black pepper in there. Yes. And you can actually kind of see the black pepper if you really get in there with a spoon. And it's a really great sauce. Yeah, I would put this on a lot of different things. I mean, it's suitable for that. And then this one. So this is Arthur Bryant. Oh, yeah. So this is like most savory. You said salty. It's also very salty. It's herbaceous. I would say it's the least sweet of the three local sauces that we have here. It's probably the least sweet of anything on the table. Yeah, I mean, it's really good flavor. It tastes like roast beef, a little bit like roast beef in there. But I still think I like Gates the best. That's your bottle of choice. That is my bottle of choice. But you may have a different choice at home. Why not do your own taste test of Kansas City barbecue sauces? I promise you won't be disappointed. For full episodes of your favorite cooking shows, head over to ATK's full episodes channel on YouTube. You can stream complete seasons of America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country, and more. See you there.