Cherry BBQ Sauce

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Cherry BBQ sauce is sweet and spicy and your new favorite grilling companion. Use it on everything!

This recipe has been retested and updated with new photos since first posting June 2016.

It’s hard to not embrace the seasonal produce when it shows up, especially when the sweet cherries are on sale at the grocery store! I can always go for some cherry pie, but I can’t resist using cherries for savory dishes too.

Fruit works really well as a base for savory sauces. After all, tomatoes are fruits too, and when you add onions or shallots and heat-inducing spices, you end up with a sauce that rivals any standard variety. Once I had made my peach BBQ sauce I knew that cherry was next on the list!

Honestly, the hardest part of making this sauce is pitting the cherries. If you don’t have a cherry pitter tool, you should definitely get one. Until a few years ago I had been pitting cherries by hand, which is not fun at all.

This recipe makes just about 2 cups — perfect for slathering on ribs, meatloaf, or burgers!

Ingredients for cherry BBQ sauce

Full list of ingredients with quantities is located in the recipe card.

You’ll need:

• Cherries – Sweet, not sour/tart
• Brown sugar
• Onion or shallot
• Red wine vinegar
• Fine sea salt
• Ground cayenne pepper
• Ground cloves

You can swap the red wine vinegar for white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar, but note the flavor will be slightly different.

Frozen cherries can be used in place of fresh, but make sure they are thawed, and double check that all of the pits have been removed. Because frozen cherries are pitted by machine, sometimes a few slip through!

How to make this recipe

Wash the cherries and remove the stems. Pit the cherries into a deeper bowl to keep the mess to a minimum. I definitely recommend wearing an apron here! Getting some cherry juice on you is unavoidable.

You can pit some extra cherries for snacking or to use later, but note that pitted cherries don’t keep as long as unpitted.

Roughly chop the cherries by hand or use a food processor. If you have a 3-cup processor, you’ll need to do this in two batches.

Combine the cherries, brown sugar, onion (or shallot), red wine vinegar, salt, cayenne, and cloves in a saucepan. Set over medium-high heat.

Bring to a boil, stirring to mix and dissolve the sugar. Once boiling, reduce heat to medium-low and let simmer. The mixture should be lightly bubbly, so adjust the heat as needed for your stove.

Let the mixture cook for about 25 minutes, stirring often, until the cherries and onions are soft and a lot of juice has been released.

Remove from heat and let cool briefly, then transfer to a blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth. Make sure the lid is vented to allow steam to escape.

Note: an immersion blender will also work here, but because the quantity is small, I recommend transferring the sauce to an immersion blender cup to prevent splattering.

Transfer to a jar or other airtight container. Let cool to room temperature, then store in the refrigerator until ready to use. It will keep for about 10 days.

Use this cherry barbecue sauce as a glaze, topped on grilled chicken, or mixed into mayo for a dipping sauce.