White BBQ Sauce (Easy & Deliciosu!)

Hailing from Alabama, this flavorful white BBQ sauce tastes amazing with almost anything! It’s creamy and flavorful, with a bit of spiciness.

If you live in the southern United States, you are already familiar with the phenomenon white barbecue sauce. Yes, you can use this Alabama-style white sauce like you would a red BBQ sauce: baste, grill and baste! It has a unique, creamy flavor and a tangy finish: think black pepper and horseradish. Alex and I whipped up a batch and fell in love instantly. Our first use was on a platter of grilled eggplant, then we started spritzing on pretty much anything.

What is white BBQ sauce?

White barbecue sauce is a mayonnaise-based hot sauce invented in 1925 by a man named Bob Gibson in Decatur, Alabama. At his Big Bob Gibson Bar-BQ restaurant, he smoked chicken and doused it in his homemade white sauce. (Read more about Bob here: You can also buy his original sauce!) It caught on, and now people in Alabama think of a white sauce when they think of crickets.

what it is made of

Mayonnaise is the key ingredient in this magical sauce: it brings the creamy body. All homemade recipes vary, of course: Bob would never reveal his secret recipe! The white BBQ sauce consists of:

• mayonnaise
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• white wine vinegar
• Honey
• horseradish
• salt & black pepper
• cayenne

Ways to serve white BBQ sauce

There are so many ways to serve white BBQ sauce, from the most traditional to the most original! Of course, it was designed to accompany pork and chicken, so let’s start there. But there are many more creative ways to use this sauce on veggies. Here are a few ideas:

1. Use on grilled chicken: Baste in the last minutes of grilling, then serve with more on the side.
2. Spread out a pulled pork sandwich.
3. Serve over salmon like a perfectly grilled salmon.
4. Use as a dip for shrimplike perfectly grilled shrimp or blackened shrimp.
5. Serve with burgers like the portobello burger, the grilled veggie burger or the chickpea burger.
6. Fry the grilled vegetables such as grilled eggplant, grilled asparagus, grilled zucchini, grilled broccoli, grilled green beans or grilled carrots.
7. Use to dip fries such as oven fries or grilled potato wedges.
8. Slather on the corn cobs such as boiled corn or grilled corn.

make it vegan

Do you like to eat vegan? If you plan to use your white BBQ sauce on veggies, you can easily make it vegan by using vegan mayonnaise and using plain maple syrup instead of honey. Vegan mayonnaise is available at most major grocery stores or online. If you can’t find it, substitute the cashew cream.

storage information

Toss this white barbecue sauce in a sealed jar and you can keep it for as long as the opened mayonnaise lasts. It takes about 3 months… but it won’t take that long! (Promise.) You might want to double the amounts below if you want a healthy amount of leftovers.

This recipe is…

Vegetarian, dairy free and gluten free. For vegans and vegetarians, use vegan mayonnaise or substitute cashew cream for the mayonnaise.

More BBQ Sauce Recipes

There are many other ways to make barbecue sauce, from the traditional to the unique! Here are a few we like:

• Homemade BBQ Sauce Sure you can buy it at the store, but homemade BBQ sauce tastes infinitely better and is SO easy to make!
• Sugar-Free BBQ Sauce This flavorful vinegar BBQ sauce is so flavorful you’ll hardly notice there’s no added sugar (we promise).
• Vegan BBQ Sauce Tastes so much better than store bought – oh, and it only takes 10 minutes!
• Mustard BBQ Sauce Made with mustard, honey and vinegar, it’s flavorful and sweet at the same time.