BBQ Buddha shares secrets

BBQ Buddha Ray Sheehan shares his secrets in a new cookbook

It’s hot and we’re still stuck at home, continuing to socially distance despite the natural pull to parks. But guess what is allowed: Backyard barbecuing with your cohabitants. It’s time to uncover that Weber, give it a scrub and create smoky, satisfying eats.

And just like the sourdough bread, tea blends and DIY pizzas you’ve been making since the pandemic started, you can also get crafty — and seriously elevate your barbecue game — by making from-scratch sauces with ingredients you already have on hand, like Heinz ketchup, soy sauce, chile powder and fresh garlic.

Ray Sheehan’s new cookbook will help. In “Award-Winning BBQ Sauces and How to Use Them” (Page Street; $22), the New Jersey champion pitmaster and BBQ Buddha sauce creator unveils the recipes for his 10 all-natural sauces, like Kansas City BBQ Sauce and Memphis Mop BBQ Sauce, which won the title of “Best BBQ Sauce in the World” at the Fifth Annual World Hot Sauce Awards. And he suggests five dishes to make with each, from tailgate favorites to perfect weeknight dinners.

Why would a fierce player on the competitive barbecue circuit share his award-winning recipes?

“People keep asking me that,” says Sheehan, from his home in New Egypt, New Jersey, where he’s been making smoked bratwurst with IPA mustard barbecue sauce. “Everyone brings something different to a recipe. So, I thought, ‘Let’s put it out there and see what people do.’ Ultimately, I just want people to get into the kitchen and cook. And this book will help them incorporate more barbecue into their cooking.”

It certainly will, especially when each sauce recipe yields at least two cups. After you master pork ribs for that smoky Memphis Mop Sauce, whip leftovers into glistening Pork Benedict with BBQ Hollandaise. Brush Sheehan’s hoisin-based Asian BBQ Sauce, which gets its umami flavor from black garlic, to caramelize the skirt steak for Asian BBQ Beef Skewers. (No black garlic during a pandemic? Use roasted regular garlic instead.) And submerge Competition-Style Smoked Chicken Thighs in warm, tangy Peach BBQ Sauce for a golden glaze.

The cookbook, with its lay-flat binding and stunning photography by Ken Goodman, opens with Sheehan’s sauce guide so you can even build your own. Start with a base (tomato, vinegar, mustard) then add sweet (sugar, honey, molasses), sour (lemon juice, tamarind), savory (onion, garlic, herbs) and salty elements (sea salt, fish sauce, anchovy paste) to achieve balance.

He also offers a list of secret ingredients, from bourbon and cherry juice to dried porcinis, coffee and beef drippings, to elevate your final creation. Use these sparingly, Sheehan says, and always taste and retaste your sauce warm, so you can identify and tweak the individual flavors.

“Bourbon tends to take over a sauce so I’d be careful with that, but something like beef drippings are more subtle and act as background flavor,” says Sheehan, a certified Kansas City Barbecue Society judge.

But his true secret ingredient isn’t an add-in. He leaves out artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. While the BBQ Buddha line of sauces are not certified organic, they don’t contain the high-fructose corn syrup and flavor enhancers, like MSG, typically found in commercially bottled sauces.

“Even in competitions, people are pumping up their sauces with MSG and other ingredients, but I wanted to be able to pronounce my ingredients,” he says. “If I’m going to feed this to my family, I want it to be good food.”

Sheehan found barbecue via fine dining. He spent his early career in the restaurants of Bobby Flay and Chris Mumford before going to culinary school and working in every facet of the food industry, from dishwasher and chef to food service director for a natural food company.

But it was the summers as a kid on his grandfather’s farm in Puerto Rico — surrounded by sugar cane, banana trees, pigs, cows and open-fire cooking — that made a lasting impression on him. “I was mesmerized by the smell of the burning wood, the sound of the fire crackling and the anticipation of the finished meal,” he writes in the cookbook.

A finished meal brushed with tangy, sweet, smoky barbecue sauce.

Sheehan