healthy recipe

This is the perfect recipe to kick off a holiday weekend! I know a lot of you are going to be out grilling this weekend, and you will almost certainly be reaching for some barbecue sauce! Barbecue is my condiment of choice for just about anything – ribs, chicken, fries…you name it. But have you ever looked at the ingredients on a bottle of barbecue sauce? One of the first two ingredients is always sugar! GAH!

Don’t get me wrong, I have a mild addiction to the sugar in just about any form. But I would rather eat my sugar in the form of a cookie than sneaking around in my barbecue sauce.

Which is why I tried to come up with my very own recipe for a sugar free version that I would like just as much as the Sweet Baby Rays in our fridge.

The problem is that barbecue sauce just needs to have some sweetness (in my opinion) to be good. So how can you add that without adding sugar?

I did it in a couple ways. The first, slightly unconventional way, was through the use of a pureed caramelized onion. It may sounds kind of strange, but believe me, it works. I just love the flavor of caramelized onions to begin with, so adding it to the sauce would do nothing but good things.

The second way was through adding in some natural sweeteners like honey and molasses. Most barbecue sauces have molasses or brown sugar in them anyways, so it is an important flavor to add to the sauce.

The last way was by adding a bit of pineapple juice. Amazingly, pineapple juice concentrate is in some of your favorite commercially prepared barbecue sauces anyways. Not sure if its for the flavor, sweetness, or something else. But in my case I added it because pineapple is very sweet, but also has a nice tart taste that balances out the rest of the flavors.

[BT Dubs, that orange thing up there on the right is my honey jar! I found this awesome little mason jar top that I just popped onto a store-bought honey jar. I love it!]

There are lots of other ingredients that go in barbecue sauce, like tomato sauce, vinegar, mustard powder, garlic powder, smoke flavor, etc. etc. Really, the flavors you add are up to you and what you prefer. If you like spicy sauce, add some cayenne. I just chose the flavors and spices that would be found in most of your standard barbecue sauces because that’s what I like!

After a few minutes over the stove, the sauce is pretty much done! It’s really simple actually. If you want a smoother sauce, you could pour it into a blender and give it a couple turns. That also seems to help all the flavors come together even more.

Now the sauce is ready to marinate, slather, bathe, coat, or spread onto any darn thing you like! I immediately added it to a slow cooker with a couple of chicken breasts to make some pulled barbecue chicken. It was delicious! Albeit, not as sweet as that Sweet Baby Rays, but it was still fantastic! A little sweet, a little smokey, and a little tart. Yum!

I recommend storing the sauce in an airtight jar or container. You could also pop it into an old barbecue sauce bottle, or into your own squeeze bottle. It should last in the fridge for a week or two. I will tell you, I have a bottle that is over 3 weeks old in the fridge that still looks good and I’m tempted to use it for dinner tonight. Don’t worry, I will inspect it thoroughly beforehand.

Worst case, I just whip up another batch!

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I wasted absolutely no time putting two of my Christmas presents to good use. The first, as you can see, is this beautiful pie dish. One of my very thoughtful and perceptive friends got this for me after noticing that I never make any pies on the blog. Well, there was a good reason for that…I didn’t have a pie dish! Now I do, so let the pie baking begin!

The second is Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc cookbook. Another wonderful friend, who is also a big foodie, got this for me so that we try some of the recipes together. But I wasted no time and picked out his chicken pot pie recipe to try on my own first.

The trouble is that Thomas Keller, while a genius, doesn’t necessarily write the easiest recipes. Also, the chicken pot pie recipe was certainly not the healthiest. And after a food-filled holiday, my husband and I were craving something a bit healthier.

I started by sauteing the pearl onions in a bit of olive oil until they were slightly browned. I then added in the carrots, celery, and sweet potato, which is not only more flavorful, but much healthier than your average potato.

After a few minutes, I added in the chicken stock so that the veggies could soften up and become nice and flavorful. I also added some cooked chicken breast and frozen peas.

While all that was going on, I made a bit of a roux to thicken up the stock and make that creamy sauce around all the chicken and vegetables. Instead of a roux, Thomas Keller’s recipes calls for about a cup of bechamel sauce, which is rich, delicious, and very heavy. In other recipes, you will often see people add butter, flour, and heavy cream to get the same effect.

To lighten up my chicken pot pie, I made a roux/bechamel hybrid by mixing together butter and flour until I had a tight paste, then I whisked in some light milk and…..

Greek Yogurt!

My favorite healthy substitute!

After adding my roux to the pot, the stock tightened up immediately and became this creamy sauce that coated ever thing. It looked and smelled just like the filling in some of my favorite chicken pot pies.

The last change I made to the recipe to make it a bit healthier was to swap out the pie crust for some puff pastry. The pie crust alone probably adds a quarter if not a half of the calories to your average chicken pot pie. But the flaky puff pastry cuts out some of the calories and fat, and is equally delicious!

The worst part about this recipe was the waiting! We waited almost an hour for this bad boy to bake. But it was certainly worth the wait!

The puff pastry crust on top turned golden brown and nice and crusty, like you would expect from your chicken pot pie.

Once it was out of the oven, we wasted no time digging right in. We each had three slices of this pie, which probably negated any of the calories I saved by making all those healthy swaps. But we couldn’t help it…it was so good! I definitely didn’t taste “healthy”. Even though I didn’t follow Thomas Keller’s recipe to the T, I still learned a lot of took used a lot of his tips, which is why I am sure this resulted in one delicious dinner!

And in case your wondering…I did the math.

Mr. Keller’s recipe would have come to a whopping 1,500 calories per serving.

My recipe, was only 400! We probably could have finished off the pie and still consumed fewer calories than one of servings of his. I will certainly take that any day!

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Homemade Sugar Free Barbecue Sauce

Lightened Up Chicken Pot Pie

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