Grandma K’s Instant Coffee Barbecue Sauce Recipe

This recipe for my Grandma K’s Instant Coffee Barbecue sauce was found while digging through my mom’s old cookbooks and recipe boxes. It was handwritten on a sheet of note paper and tucked neatly between the pages of one of my grandma’s old cookbooks.

My grandma had a habit of keeping her recipes between the pages of her cookbooks – she didn’t have any kind of recipe box that we know of – if she had a recipe it just went into the cookbook.

Here's how the recipe looked when I scanned it - you can see where it had been taped!

BBQ Sauce Recipe Notes

This recipe is very simple to make and has an unusual ingredient you wouldn’t expect to find in Barbecue sauce – instant coffee! While I have seen many recipes that call for coffee that is already brewed, that usually causes the sauce to be a lot more watery.

If you want all the flavor of coffee for its boldness in your barbecue sauce but don’t want to sacrifice the thickness, instant coffee is the way to go!

I remember my mom making her own barbecue sauce with this recipe when we were little kids – we didn’t usually have instant coffee so she left out that ingredient, but the sauce is just as good with or without it.

My grandma always had instant coffee at her house though – she kept it right next to her bottle of Tang and a lot of times she would make me a cup of Tang and a cup of instant coffee for my grandpa for breakfast.

We usually used this recipe for ham barbecue and chicken but you could use it for nearly anything – as the directions say at the bottom: “Pour over almost anything”. 🙂

Instant Coffee BBQ Sauce Recipe

Ingredients

• ½ cup ketchup
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee

Instructions 

• Mix together and pour over almost anything.

Notes

This recipe is just as good with or without the instant coffee – you can always add more instant coffee as well depending on your own personal preference.