Super Simple Maple BBQ Sauce (vegan recipe) | The First Mess (2024)

Created by Laura Wright

5 from 4 votes

Ducking in super quick with this simple maple BBQ sauce and some links this week. As I’m putting this together, I am sitting on my porch on a sunny Friday afternoon and all I can think about is pouring myself a refreshing beverage and getting into that weekend mode. Maybe you can relate? ;)

This tomato-based recipe leans more towards the Kansas City-style of saucing (as far as I understand it). The first documented observation of a sauce being applied to the traditional method of barbecue cooking dates to 1748. A botanist noted that enslaved people were applying a sauce of pounded hot peppers, salt, and lemon. From that point, the USA’s different regional conceptions of barbecue and relating sauces have become more defined by region. You can read more about these styles here.

Perhaps discussions of barbecue and its meat-centric origins don’t seem particularly friendly to a vegan recipe site. If we keep our focus on sauce and what we can do with it from there, I think we’re good. Even with omnivorous cooking resources, I find that there’s always an opportunity to learn and apply knowledge to your own way of life.

This maple BBQ sauce is truly simple. You whisk a bunch of stuff together and tuck it in the fridge. That’s it! You can brush this simple sauce on grilled vegetables, tofu, tempeh, vegan “sausages,” or you can even add it to vegan lentil and nut loaf setups, meatballs, or batches of baked beans. Hope you give it a try. Below, there’s a few links to things that I enjoyed this week. Be well!

-On billionaires: Wealth shown to scale (LOTS of scrolling) + 1 billion seconds is 32 years and other truly mind blowing stats.

–Powerful Truth Angels is my low stakes, just-for-fun podcast listening of choice lately. I love Matty and Alex’s rapport.

–How To Be An Intersectional Environmentalist

-“Still, someone might say, what is the point of simply meandering? […] The answer is simple: for the experience alone. The point is to perceive. Nothing more and nothing less than this.”

-In need of some energetic cleansing?

-My Instagram follow of the week is the Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary.

–‘Wellness for All’ Won’t Be a Reality Until We Decolonize Yoga in the West

-To make: butter beans with salsa verde, sweet potato oat waffles, and a vegan crunchwrap supreme! (!!!)

Posted in: autumn, gluten free, grain-free, grill, oil free, salty, sauce, spring, summer, sweet, umami, vegan, winter