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What comes to mind when you think of barbecue sauce? In Eastern North Carolina, you may imagine a thin, vinegar-heavy blend with noticeable heat. Swing further south to Alabama, and you might conjure a creamy mayonnaise-based condiment with a tangy kick. But in most of the country, if you see “barbecue sauce” without any other adjectives or mention of geography, you’ll get something modeled after Kansas City–style. You know the type: thick, sticky-sweet, smoky, and darkly hued. Its base is always a tomato product, such as ketchup; it has spices such as garlic or onion powder; and it’s sweetened with molasses, brown sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, or a mixture of all three.
Despite having a few notable characteristics, Kansas City–style barbecue sauce refuses to be just one thing. If you visit Kansas City or order sauces from one of the city’s barbecue joints, you’ll notice they’re typically less sweet than what’s available in grocery stores around the country. Even the brands you’ll find at the supermarket—Sweet Baby Ray’s, Heinz, and Bull’s Eye—differ enough in flavor that each has loyal fans. To explore the range of this style, we rounded up a variety of sauces made by famous Kansas City institutions and large national brands.
Kansas City Barbecue History
A discussion about Kansas City barbecue isn’t complete without mentioning the “King”: Henry Perry. Although he bestowed the title on himself, he lived up to it. Perry was adept at smoking various types of meat, including pork, mutton, squirrels, and opossums. He arrived in Kansas City from Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 1900s and was one of the first to become a successful businessman by selling barbecue. He was known for cooking over a fire made from hickory, which produces a sweet flavor comparable to bacon, a practice still common among Kansas City pit masters. Perry topped his smoked meats with a no-frills concoction of vinegar, lard, and plenty of cayenne—but no added sugar or tomatoes—typical for old-school sauces.
Along with running a hugely popular barbecue business, Perry had a few apprentices who became Kansas City’s barbecue giants. Among them were George Gates, founder of the famous Gates Bar-B-Q, and Charlie Bryant and his brother Arthur Bryant. Charlie inherited Henry Perry’s restaurant after the mogul’s death. When Charlie retired in the late 1940s, Arthur took over the business, moved it to 18th and Brooklyn in downtown Kansas City, and renamed the restaurant after himself.
After George Gates died in the 1960s, his son Ollie Gates took over the business and expanded it. It’s now a local chain. Although there is a long-standing rivalry between Gates Bar-B-Q and Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque, both restaurants are pillars of the Kansas City community. Ollie Gates and Arthur Bryant were inducted into the Barbecue Hall of fame in 2021.
Arthur Bryant, also known as the “King of Ribs,” developed the sauce that attracted a wide range of fans including Harry Truman and Barack Obama. Photos courtesy of Diane Rauschelbach from Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque
How Kansas City–Style Became ‘Just’ Barbecue Sauce
Around the same time, pit masters and aspiring commercial manufacturers started experimenting with the existing Kansas City barbecue sauce formula. Soon the sweeter, stickier, and thicker versions of this style gained widespread popularity. To learn why, we spoke to Adrian Miller, soul food scholar and author of Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue (2021).
Miller speculates the shift may have been due to the availability, inexpensiveness, and rising popularity of ketchup in the 19th century. He also points to a related theory that suggests that many people had leftover military rations of canned ketchup from WWII and saw an opportunity to make and sell barbecue sauce. “The people [who] were thinking about going national with their products probably said, ‘Hey, if I just tinker with this ketchup, I can create something that will be not only viable but will have a long shelf life and do well on the market.’”
In addition to ketchup, people added sugar and other sweet ingredients to barbecue sauces. Especially for commercial products, these sweeteners both enhanced flavor and acted as preservatives. Flavor was undoubtedly why Arthur Bryant decided to tweak Henry Perry’s original barbecue sauce recipe after he took over the restaurant. He claimed the cayenne was too overpowering and added molasses. Soon Bryant’s sauce became as beloved as his barbecue.
During this Kansas City barbecue sauce evolution, “at some point there emerges what I would call a Midwestern barbecue sauce,” says Miller. “And that’s the one that becomes the national template for barbecue sauces.”
Tasting Kansas City–Style Barbecue Sauce
What can you expect from Kansas City barbecue sauces today? The category has something for everyone—from spice lovers to people with a sweet tooth. We tasted 11 sauces from famous Kansas City barbecue joints, small barbecue sauce companies, and popular supermarket options. They ranged in color, consistency, and flavor.
Many of the sauces from Kansas City restaurants were “herby,” “salty,” “peppery,” and “spicy.” These sauces tended to have more savory profiles with some degree of vinegariness. One exception was the sauce from Jones Bar-B-Q, a small restaurant founded around 1970 by Leavy B. Jones and now run by his daughters, Mary and Deborah Jones. It was “jammy” and had “notes of pineapple.” Tasters appreciated the layers of spices, such as chili powder, and aromatics, like garlic, that shined through in these sauces. Vibrant and pleasantly acidic, these sauces cut through the fattiness of the pulled pork we sampled them with. Tasters liked that some of these sauces looked less uniformly smooth than the supermarket brands.
Sauces made by large national brands such as Heinz tended to have a very smooth and viscous texture, while sauces from smaller, Kansas City–based companies were less uniform and were sometimes looser.
The products from large national brands had plenty of fans as well. They tended to be sweeter and smokier, with prominent brown sugar and honey notes. Thick, smooth, and viscous, these sauces are made to be brushed on a rack of ribs and are ideal dipping sauces.
Our tasting evoked childhood memories of backyard barbecues and surprised us with unfamiliar flavors. We decided not to rank the lineup and instead organized the chart alphabetically. We encourage you to use the tasting notes to find a sauce that might become your new favorite.
- Sample plain
- Sample tossed with smoked pulled pork
