08 July 2010
Recipe For Pomegranate Barbecue Sauce
We have been asked for some time whether we could source a pomegranate molasses and I am nearly there on that. One of our current suppliers, who is based in Beirut in the Lebanon, sent us a sample of Concentrated Pomegranate Juice which is the same thing as Pomegranate Molasses, or so I am told. It has a lovely deep, licquorice colour and a sweet and sour, tangy sort of taste. I thought that this would give a great flavour to barbecue sauce, being less acidic and tart than adding vinegar.
Here's what I came up with, and it's been tried and tested, and wolfed down, by two very appreciative children, who are the meanest and harshest food critics by far. This is a less sweet sauce than the one I posted last month and I prefer it.
Ingredients
1½ tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
2tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2tbsp agave syrup*, honey or golden syrup/corn syrup
1tsp smooth mustard, ideally an English Mustard
1 garlic clove, chopped finely and crushed
¼tsp sea salt
¼tsp coarse ground black pepper
¼tsp paprika
8 chicken drumsticks
1. Prepare all the barbecue ingredients and mix together thoroughly.
2. Pour the Pomegranate Barbecue Sauce over the chicken drumsticks and leave to marinade for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.
3. Put the oven on at 180oC / 350oF.
4. Bake the chicken drumsticks marinaded in the Pomegranate Barbecue Sauce for about 30 minutes in the oven until crisp and cooked right through. Enjoy immediately with potatoes and vegetables or a salad.
5. If using to cook on a barbecue proper, mop the Pomegranate Barbecue Sauce over the meat in the last 30 minutes of the cooking time. If you add it on any earlier, the flavours will be overpowered by the barbecue aromas and the tomato and sugars will go beyond caramelisation and burn to black cinders.
* I like agave syrup as I find it less sickly sweet than many other liquid sweeteners (even though technically it is sweeter than sugar), but you can use any of the other ones mentioned as they all give the same flavour profile to the sauce, plus caramelise decently while you are cooking the chicken legs.
