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InsideHook
JULY 17, 2025

Good morning, reader.

In all my years of culinary exploration as an enthusiastic home chef, I have found that making barbecue sauce from scratch is among the best bang-for-your-buck tricks to pull out. It’s easy to tailor it to your own tastes, and it doesn’t require a full day standing over a simmering pot — but people seem to be very impressed by it. So at your next cookout, by all means, give it a shot. At home cooking for the kids on a Wednesday night, though? I won’t tell anyone if you go for the store-bought stuff.

In fact, we recently rounded up a bunch of InsideHook staffers and 16 bottles of barbecue sauce, some I picked up from my local supermarket and the rest from more of a specialty shop. Amanda Gabriele compiled the results, along with some of our commentary, here. As of this writing, I still don’t know which one came out on top, but it’s gotta be Sweet Baby Ray’s, right?

Elsewhere:

All that and more, below.

Mike Conklin
Editor-in-Chief

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