Peach BBQ Sauce

Peach BBQ sauce is a sweet, summery sauce that’s perfect for seasonal grilling. It’s light and fruity, and really different from anything you’ll find in a supermarket BBQ sauce bottle.

The peach flavor comes through wonderfully in this easy-to-make summer fruit BBQ sauce. Peaches add body to the sauce in place of tomatoes, and then it’s sweetened with honey instead of the classic brown sugar you’ll find in most BBQ sauce recipes.

That gives you a much lighter sauce that complements rather than masks what you use it on. It’s best, in my opinion, on chicken, but it works well on pork too.

This is a tested canning recipe adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, which is especially important when working with recipes that mix in low-acid ingredients like onions. Without a tested recipe, the mix might not be acidic enough for canning, but these proportions are both delicious and safe for canning.

If you love fruit BBQ sauces, this is just one of the many tested recipes, and apricot BBQ sauce and rhubarb BBQ sauce are delicious too, plus I have plenty of other peach canning recipes if you have a peach harvest taking over your kitchen counters this summer.

Choosing Peaches for BBQ Sauce

The main thing here is you can only use yellow peaches, not white peaches. Yellow peaches are more acidic, and the white variation isn’t acidic enough for canning (even in recipes where you’re adding extra vinegar like this one). That’s ok, the yellow ones are more flavorful when cooked anyway.

Beyond color, just about any peaches will work here, and they can be anywhere from firm ripe to overripe. Firm ripe will give you a thicker sauce that needs less cooking, but you will definitely need an immersion blender since they won’t fall apart easily.

Freestone peaches save time, since they’re easier to process, but clingstone work fine too. This is actually a good recipe for using up clingstone peaches. Everything gets pureed in the end, so it doesn’t matter if they come off the pit a little messy and in uneven slices.

Peel them the way you would for canning peaches, with a minute in boiling water and then a slip of the skins. Or, since this is a small batch, just quickly peel them with a knife.

Ingredients for Peach BBQ Sauce

There are quite a few ingredients here, but we’re building flavor, and each one is important. Just make sure you don’t change the vinegar added, as that’s what makes this safe for canning.

The dry seasonings at the end are yours to change, and you can adjust those to your taste.

• Peaches: Yellow-fleshed, peeled and pitted. Chop them fine so they cook evenly. Overripe is ideal, and fruit that never quite ripened works too. Frozen peaches are fine if they were peeled and sliced before they went in the freezer.
• Red bell pepper: Seeded and chopped fine. It’s in here for sweetness and color, not heat. The amount is fixed, because bell pepper is low acid.
• Onion: Any yellow or white cooking onion. Same rule as the pepper, so don’t add extra. It cooks down to almost nothing once the sauce is pureed.
• Garlic: This recipe has a lot of garlic, and it’s what makes it taste like barbecue sauce instead of jam. Jarred minced garlic works, measured by volume.
• Honey: The only sweetener in the recipe. Any mild honey will do. Buckwheat honey is strong enough to cover up the peach, so save that one for something else.
• Cider vinegar: 5 percent acidity, like this cider vinegar. This is the safety ingredient. Don’t cut the amount and don’t use a weaker vinegar. Homemade vinegar has an unknown acidity, so it isn’t used for canning.
• Worcestershire sauce: A tablespoon, for savory depth behind the fruit.
• Hot pepper flakes, dry mustard, and salt: The seasoning. Dry spices are the one place you can safely change this recipe. Take the heat up or down, or add smoked paprika or black pepper.

For equipment, you want a large heavy saucepan, a sharp knife, and an immersion blender for the end. A regular blender works too, in batches.

How to Make Peach BBQ Sauce

Everything goes in the pot at once, so the cooking part is simple. The work is all at the cutting board beforehand, but everything dices up pretty quickly.

Start the canner heating while you chop, and the whole thing is done in about an hour.

Prep the Peaches and Vegetables

This recipe starts by peeling the peaches.

Dip the peaches in boiling water for about a minute, slip the skins, and cut them off the pits. Or, since it’s a small batch, you can simply peel them quickly by hand with a sharp paring knife.

Chop them fine, and measure them after chopping.

Seed and chop the bell pepper, chop the onion, and mince the garlic. Keep everything about the same size so it all softens at the same rate. Fill the canner and start heating it now, since everything will come together quickly once the sauce is finished cooking.

Simmer the Sauce

Combine everything in a large saucepan, bring it to a boil, then drop the heat to a simmer. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes to come down to the consistency of a thin commercial barbecue sauce.

Keep it at a gentle simmer, and don’t hard boil.

Stir it often. Honey scorches faster than sugar does, and a heavy-bottomed pan helps. The sauce is thinner in the pot than it will be in the jar, so stop while it still runs off a spoon.

Puree the Sauce

Take the pan off the heat and run an immersion blender through it. A few seconds is enough to turn the whole pan into a smooth, pourable sauce. A regular blender does the same job in batches.

Put it back on the heat afterward, because the sauce has to be hot going into the jars. You can skip this step and leave it chunky if you’d rather, and it doesn’t change the processing time.

Canning Peach BBQ Sauce

Have your water bath canner filled and heating well before the sauce is ready. Wash your canning jars, keep them warm, and lay out the lids, rings, and a canning funnel.

Ladle the hot sauce into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. That’s more headspace than a jam takes, so measure it instead of eyeballing. Run a bubble tool around the inside of each jar, check the headspace again, and wipe the rims and threads clean before the lids go on.

Lower the jars into the canner so they’re covered by at least an inch of water. Process half pints for 15 minutes (or 20 minutes for pints) in a boiling water bath canner, adjusting for altitude.

Turn the heat off when the time is up, and let the jars sit in the canner another 5 minutes before you lift them out. Cool them undisturbed on a towel for 12 to 24 hours before checking the seals.

Ways to Use Peach BBQ Sauce

Chicken is where this one shines. Brush it onto thighs or a cut up bird in the last ten minutes of grilling or roasting, since honey burns before the meat is done. It’s good on pork too, on a shoulder pulled apart with forks, on ribs under the broiler, or on plain chops in a hot pan.

It also makes a wonderful dipping sauce, and that’s where most of mine goes. Put a bowl of it out with chicken tenders, sweet potato fries, or coconut shrimp. Thin a jar with a splash of vinegar and you have a mopping sauce for a long slow cook on the grill.

Away from the grill, whisk a spoonful into a vinaigrette for a really lovely dressing. It glazes a meatloaf like ketchup does, and my kids love it that way.

Storage and Shelf Life

After the jars have cooled 12 to 24 hours, press the center of each lid to check the seal. A sealed lid is firm, slightly concave, and won’t flex.

Remove the rings before storing the jars, since a ring can hold a failed lid in place and hide a jar that never sealed. Wipe them down, label them with the date, and store them somewhere cool, dark, and dry. Sealed sauce keeps its quality for 12 to 18 months.

If a jar doesn’t seal, refrigerate it and use it within a week or two, or reprocess it with a fresh lid within 24 hours. Once a jar is opened, refrigerate it and use it within 1 to 2 weeks.

You can also skip the canner. The sauce keeps in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, or in the freezer for up to 6 months in straight-sided freezer-safe jars with 1 inch of headspace.

Peach BBQ Sauce FAQs

Substitutions, heat level, and shelf life are what people ask about a fruit barbecue sauce. Here are the answers.

Peach Canning Recipes

Putting up more than a few pounds of peaches? These recipes will help stock your pantry!

Peach Salsa

Peach Butter

Blueberry Peach Jam

Once you have a canner full of sauce, the rest of the savory shelf is worth filling too. Here are more of my water bath canning recipes if you have the pot out anyway.

Savory Sauce Canning Recipes

More jars to serve with dinner instead of on toast.

Rhubarb BBQ Sauce

Roasted Marinara Sauce (Waterbath Canning Recipe)

Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce