Seriously, Add BBQ Sauce To This Classic Cocktail For A Total Flavor Upgrade

We must admit, the notion of adding barbecue sauce — the multi-use condiment that's equally delicious as a marinade or a dipping sauce — to a cocktail might sound a little goofy at first. But when the charcoal grill smoke clears to reveal the target libation in question, it just all makes so much sense that you'll hardly recall a time when you weren't spooning the red stuff into your booze. We are talking, of course, about the bloody Mary, the iconic brunch staple that's super-conducive to just this kind of customization.

At its core, a bloody Mary is surprisingly simple, but infinitely customizable. You can do little more than add vodka to tomato juice, and defy anyone to tell you that it isn't a bloody Mary. Seasonings like salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, and Tabasco get it all a little closer to the expected, and a fresh, leafy celery stalk really seals the deal. And, from there, you can further imbue your bloody Mary with oodles of other creative ingredients to make it as ornate as you wish. But barbecue sauce is one of the few upgrades that packs such a tremendously smoky, savory punch with so little effort or additional expense. 

Virtually any variety has something to offer a blood Mary, from a tangy, vinegar-based Carolina-style sauce to a smoky, sweet Kansas City-style version. So you can go ahead and start mixing it in to taste to likely success, or consider your other ingredients even more carefully to ensure an excellent balance of flavors.

Moisture and salt content are typically primary considerations whenever you're tinkering with adaptations to food and drinks. Introduce too many liquids to plenty of recipes, and you'll thin everything out beyond repair. The same goes for salt; you cannot simply keep adding potentially saline items to any preparation without considering what you may need to walk back. The good news in the case of your barbecue sauce bloody Mary is that both elements are already more or less wet, even accounting for the sauce's greater viscosity. But a basic bloody Mary, even absent fun additions, is already plenty salty, and most barbecue sauces will only introduce more of the mineral.

To bring your barbecue sauce bloody Mary back down to a mellower taste, reach for a lower sodium tomato juice to use as your base. You can also juice your own fresh tomatoes for bloody Marys to avoid any factory additives. You might even want to totally omit those taps from the salt shaker until you've combined all of your other ingredients and taken a test sip. That Worcestershire sauce also packs plenty of concentrated salt into a relatively low volume, so you should reduce it by at least half, too, or even consider the barbecue sauce to be an outright swap. Serve with something like tender smoked brisket for the full cookout effect.