My Own Monster: The Story of Dr. Sauce

It was in my kitchen, two years ago, that I created my own monster. It seemed decent enough of an idea, to make a barbecue sauce using Dr. Pepper, and avoiding the use of ketchup. But what happened in the kitchen that day has, like Frankenstein's monster, continued to haunt me.

I don't understand the nature of this monster. It's not a barbecue sauce, even though it started as an attempt to make one. It's not a steak sauce, as it lacks the tartness of raisins or tamarind. All I know is, it has a unique flavor, and it tastes fantastic on my oven-fried chicken wings. I also put it on burgers and hot dogs, and even after having made many batches, I still keep raiding the fridge with a spoon to taste it straight, as I still can't figure out what it really is. Maybe you, the Instructables community, can help me figure that out.

All dramatics aside, Dr. Sauce gets its name from one of its main ingredients, Dr. Pepper. It's a great way to use up flat DP from a 2-liter bottle, as the soda does not need any fizz to get cooked into this recipe. Let's hop to it, shall we?

The ingredients list:

1/3 cup canola (or other neutral) oil
One-quarter of a good-sized onion, chopped into half-rings
16 ounces canned tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups (otherwise known as one can) of Dr. Pepper
The juice and zest of one lemon
1/2 cup loosely-packed brown sugar (probably 1/3 cup packed or so)
2 tsp powdered or granulated garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp dried basil

Essential tools:

One decent saucepan (I have a saucier-like device)
Wooden spoon
Spatula
Good knife for chopping
Grater for zesting the lemon
Blender

Nice-to-haves:

Splatter guard

First stop: Browning some onion!

Step 1: Cry Me an Onion

Heat up your saucepan over a medium heat. Put in the oil (all 1/3 cup: it's not just for frying up the onions, it's a part of the flavor and mouthfeel of the sauce), then carefully pop in your onions. You want the onions to brown, but not burn, and you don't want it to happen too fast. You also want the onions to go translucent, so keep an eye on that temperature control. You can smell the onions browning, so you can use that as a guide.

Once that's done, we move on to the next step.

Comments

[kingotho]

"Dr. Sauce" -- that's classic. You can't be mad at a sauce with a PhD.

[Foaly7]

I'm trying to rewrite this recipe to make it blue. Anybody got suggestions?

[nightninja87]

add smurfs lots and lots of smurfs

[Foaly7]

I think I will attempt to build a chicken and "taco blend" cheese pizza using this sauce.

[paintballmark27]

It taste awesome on burgers and whatever else im eating like pizza crust.

[dmlandrum]

It's also a fantastic sauce for my baked wings. :-) (See my other Instructables.)

[pyro13]

Wow, what a monster. The two greatest substances known to man, put together. this would make one crazy son of a steak sauce =D

[dmlandrum]

Just out of curiosity, what's the other great substance I'm using? I'm assuming Dr. Pepper is one of them. :-)

[PKTraceur]

Pepper, perhaps? I love pepper.... *drools*

[pyro13]

barbeque sauce =D

[nightninja87]

its consider a red sauce cause of the tomatos in it if it had beef stock in it it be a brown sauce it seems to be like a bbq sauce

[theguy0000]

I'm curious to hear some of the ways you've experimented with this. I'm definitely going to do some experimenting of my own.

[Bartboy]

is it a brown sauce like HP sauce?

[dmlandrum]

It tastes absolutely nothing like HP Sauce.

[Bartboy]

agreed!

[thewoodcarver]

I will have to try this I don't care for the Dr. but have used soda of one kind or another for cooking and it always seems to add a unique flavor

[Bartboy]

exactly!

[dkistner1111]

Have you perchance done a nutritional analysis of the finished product? Like how many calories/calories from fat/carbohydrates/protein etc. per tablespoon? If not, when I make this I'll try to figure it out. Gotta get to the store for the ingredients. How does it grill?

[dmlandrum]

I have not, mainly because I'm afraid to. :-) It has plenty of sugars in it, so it grills up pretty good and gets nice and caramelized.

[cowscankill]

Huh... Looks very... brown lol no it's strange looking, but maybe also tasty

[dmlandrum]

That's just the crap photography. It's a reddish-brown sauce, like most store-bought barbecue sauces.

[21GeeOff21]

I just made some. It looks alright, but I'm gonna have to wait for it to cool to try. I like the simplicity of the recipe.

[dmlandrum]

It definitely has a quirkiness to it. I really like it on my oven-fried wings. I look forward to your opinion. If you like it, great, but if you don't, that's fine, too. This sauce definitely isn't for everybody.

[21GeeOff21]

I had it with some pork chops. I love it. Its kind of like a ketchup with a kick.