{
 "id": "honey-bbq-sauce",
 "names": {
  "name": "Honey barbecue sauce",
  "aliases": [
   "honey BBQ",
   "honey barbeque"
  ],
  "said": "The order a table puts in for the person who does not want heat, and the one children get."
 },
 "region": [
  "us"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "base": "sweet-tomato",
  "heat": "none"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "A thick sweet red sauce: corn syrup or sugar, vinegar, tomato, honey, smoke flavour and spices. Sticky enough to hold on a wing without butter, sweet enough to caramelise under a broiler or on a grill. Every wing chain sells one, and it is usually the mildest thing on the board.",
  "story": "Barbecue sauce reached the wing through the pizza chains. Domino's added Buffalo wings to its national menu in 1994 after four Super Bowl appearances by the Buffalo Bills, and Pizza Hut followed the next year. As the market grew, restaurants built out sauces beyond Buffalo — some drawing on Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Caribbean and Indian cooking, some inventing combinations like Blueberry BBQ Wing Sauce or Maple/Bacon Glaze to hold customers' interest.\n\n*Inference —* honey barbecue is the sauce that made a wing board possible. Once a menu had a second sauce it needed a sweet one, and every sauce added after that had somewhere to sit.\n\nThe sweet-and-sour tomato condiment behind it is much older than the wing: American home cookbooks were bottling a spiced 'chili sauce' of tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, onions and red peppers well before 1930.",
  "how": "Warm it — cold barbecue sauce slides off. Toss the fried wings in it, or brush it on a smoked or grilled wing in the last few minutes so the sugar sets without burning. It will burn: the sugar in it catches long before the skin is done, which is why it goes on at the end and never at the start.",
  "today": "On every wing board in America. As of 16 September 2026 the USDA label panel for Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce reads 300 mg sodium and 15 g sugar in a 2-tablespoon serving — 150 mg and 7.5 g in one tablespoon. High fructose corn syrup is its first ingredient; honey comes fourth, behind tomato paste. No Scoville number is published, and none would mean anything: the label declares no chile at all."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "smoked-bbq-wing",
   "as": "The style that brushes it on at the end of a smoke.",
   "rel": "style"
  },
  {
   "to": "memphis-rub",
   "as": "The dry half of the Memphis fork; this is the wet half, bottled.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "mild-sauce",
   "as": "Chicago's carryout relative, poured rather than tossed and sharper on the vinegar.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "mumbo-sauce",
   "as": "The D.C. relative, thinner and sourer and built on ketchup.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "hot-honey",
   "as": "What happens when the honey goes in without the tomato and picks up a chile.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo-wild-wings",
   "as": "Sells it on a board of a dozen-plus sauces where Buffalo is one option among many.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "grill",
   "as": "Goes on in the last minutes, because the sugar in it catches before the skin is done.",
   "rel": "fry"
  },
  {
   "to": "wing-night",
   "as": "The sauce that lets a table order one round for people who disagree about heat.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "confusable_with": [
  {
   "id": "hot-honey",
   "tell": "Tomato. Honey barbecue has it and is thick and red; hot honey is honey, chillies and vinegar, and pours."
  }
 ],
 "profile": {
  "kind": "bottle",
  "base": "sweet-tomato",
  "maker": "Sweet Baby Ray's Inc.",
  "town": null,
  "state": null,
  "ingredients": [
   "high fructose corn syrup",
   "distilled vinegar",
   "tomato paste",
   "honey",
   "modified food starch",
   "salt",
   "natural flavor",
   "caramel color",
   "pineapple juice concentrate",
   "spices",
   "sodium benzoate",
   "natural smoke flavor",
   "molasses",
   "garlic",
   "corn syrup",
   "sugar",
   "tamarind"
  ],
  "pepper_rank": 0,
  "vinegar_rank": 2,
  "fat_rank": 0,
  "tomato_rank": 3,
  "sugar_rank": 1,
  "mustard_rank": 0,
  "soy_rank": 0,
  "serving_tbsp": 2,
  "sodium_mg_per_tbsp": 150,
  "sugar_g_per_tbsp": 7.5,
  "scoville": null,
  "heat_claim": null,
  "source": "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq",
  "url": "https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/2017251/nutrients",
  "accessed": "2026-09-16",
  "note": "Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce, 28 oz. Label serving is 2 Tbsp (37 g); sodium 300 mg and sugars 15 g per serving, so 150 mg and 7.5 g per tablespoon. sugar_rank 1 is high fructose corn syrup; the honey the sauce is named for sits at 4, and corn syrup and sugar appear again at 15 and 16. pepper_rank is 0 — no chile is named anywhere on the label. No heat word, no Scoville number."
 },
 "recipes": [
  {
   "title": "Barbecue Sauce I",
   "source": "s:wikibooks-barbecue-sauce",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
   "url": "https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Barbecue_Sauce_I",
   "author": "Wikibooks Cookbook contributors",
   "region": "Texas",
   "ingredients": [
    "¼ cup (62.5 mL) brown sugar",
    "1 tbsp (15 mL) garlic powder",
    "1 tbsp (15 mL) paprika powder",
    "2 tsp (10 mL) salt",
    "1 heaping tsp (6.66 mL) of ground coffee beans",
    "1 cup (250 mL) ketchup",
    "½ cup (125 mL) water",
    "3 tbsp (45 mL) white vinegar",
    "A shot of whiskey or ½ shot of cognac",
    "A squeeze of lemon juice"
   ],
   "text": "Mix everything in a pot.\nLet it simmer for around 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.",
   "note": "Wikibooks Cookbook, CC BY-SA 4.0, copied in full with the source named. No honey in it — this is the ketchup-and-brown-sugar base a honey sauce is a variation on."
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-buffalo-wing",
  "s:wp-pizza-hut",
  "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq",
  "s:harland-1906",
  "s:wikibooks-barbecue-sauce"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-buffalo-wing"
  },
  "fields": {
   "profile": {
    "tier": "harvested",
    "source": "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq",
    "fetched_at": "2026-09-16"
   },
   "names.said": {
    "tier": "tradition"
   },
   "text.how": {
    "tier": "tradition",
    "note": "the timing and the burning are general grill practice"
   },
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "harvested",
    "source": "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "schema": 1,
 "type": "sauce",
 "images": [],
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "A thick sweet red sauce: corn syrup or sugar, vinegar, tomato, honey, smoke flavour and spices. Sticky enough to hold on a wing without butter, sweet enough to caramelise under a broiler or on a grill.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "us",
   "name": "The United States",
   "state": null,
   "note": "use when a node belongs to the whole country"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "smoked-bbq-wing",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Smoked barbecue wings",
   "as": "The style that brushes it on at the end of a smoke.",
   "rel": "style"
  },
  {
   "to": "memphis-rub",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Memphis dry rub",
   "as": "The dry half of the Memphis fork; this is the wet half, bottled.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "mild-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Mild sauce",
   "as": "Chicago's carryout relative, poured rather than tossed and sharper on the vinegar.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "mumbo-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Mumbo sauce",
   "as": "The D.C. relative, thinner and sourer and built on ketchup.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "hot-honey",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Hot honey",
   "as": "What happens when the honey goes in without the tomato and picks up a chile.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo-wild-wings",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Buffalo Wild Wings",
   "as": "Sells it on a board of a dozen-plus sauces where Buffalo is one option among many.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "grill",
   "type": "fry",
   "name": "the grill",
   "as": "Goes on in the last minutes, because the sugar in it catches before the skin is done.",
   "rel": "fry"
  },
  {
   "to": "wing-night",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "wing night",
   "as": "The sauce that lets a table order one round for people who disagree about heat.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-buffalo-wing",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "Buffalo wing",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wing",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-pizza-hut",
   "kind": "wikipedia",
   "title": "Pizza Hut",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce — branded food label (FDC ID 2017251)",
   "publisher": "USDA FoodData Central",
   "url": "https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/2017251/nutrients",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:harland-1906",
   "kind": "book",
   "title": "Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping",
   "author": "Marion Harland",
   "publisher": "The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis",
   "year": 1906,
   "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64459",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "new edition, revised and enlarged; copyright 1903 and 1906. Public domain, read via Project Gutenberg ebook 64459"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wikibooks-barbecue-sauce",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Cookbook:Barbecue Sauce I",
   "publisher": "Wikibooks",
   "url": "https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Barbecue_Sauce_I",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "CC BY-SA 4.0; Cookbook:Barbecue Sauce redirects here"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-buffalo-wing"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-buffalo-wing"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "tradition",
   "note": "the timing and the burning are general grill practice"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "harvested",
   "source": "s:fdc-sweet-baby-rays-honey-bbq"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "smoked-bbq-wing",
   "type": "style",
   "name": "Smoked barbecue wings",
   "as": "The sweet tomato sauce that goes on at the end, once the long cook is over and the sugar can no longer burn.",
   "rel": "sauce"
  },
  {
   "from": "alabama-white-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Alabama white sauce",
   "as": "The red barbecue sauce this one is the local answer to.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "hot-honey",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Hot honey",
   "as": "The other sweet answer to a wing; that one runs through tomato and this one does not.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "memphis-rub",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Memphis dry rub",
   "as": "The wet half of the Memphis fork, in a bottle.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "mild-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Mild sauce",
   "as": "The supermarket relative: same sweet tomato family, different city and a corn-syrup lead.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "soy-garlic-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Soy garlic sauce",
   "as": "The American sweet-brown wing, reached through corn syrup and tomato instead of soy.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "teriyaki-sauce",
   "type": "sauce",
   "name": "Teriyaki sauce",
   "as": "The American sweet glaze doing the same job through tomato and corn syrup.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "country-sweet-chicken-and-ribs",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Country Sweet Chicken & Ribs",
   "as": "The nearest national relative to a Country Sweet glaze, and the house says it is not that either.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "la-nova-pizzeria",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "La Nova Pizzeria",
   "as": "Its barbecue wing is the Buffalo argument against cayenne and butter, sold from a pizza counter.",
   "rel": "sauce"
  },
  {
   "from": "hot-honey-word",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "hot honey",
   "as": "The sweet wing sauce it arrived to compete with.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  }
 ]
}