Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Place the tomatoes, garlic and jalapenos on a baking sheet. Melt 1 tablespoon of the coconut oil and drizzle over vegetables tossing to coat. Season with salt and Roast for 15 minutes.
- Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon coconut oil in a saucepan on medium heat. Smear the roasted garlic into the bottom of the pan with the coconut oil. Add the minced shallot and sauté until translucent. Add all of the spices and remaining 1 teaspoon salt and stir to coat evenly. Add the broth, lime juice and tomato paste and keep stirring. For how long? Until the tomato paste is completely incorporated? Add the roasted tomatoes and jalapenos and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Transfer carefully to a food processor or blender and blend until very smooth. After desired consistency is reached, taste for seasoning. Add maple syrup and vinegar and blend again
Health Benefits
It is hard to find an all-natural barbeque sauce out there—especially one that contains nothing refined or artificially-processed. The number one culprit (and often number one ingredient) in the mass-market barbeque sauces is high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is far removed from anything ‘natural’ that your body knows how to process. Sugar is extracted from a super-secret-high-security-clearance-process with the assistance of enzymes and chemicals and somehow results in something your body thinks is ‘sweet’ but receives no nutrients from. Our bodies and culture have also adapted to thinking barbeque sauce should be sweet. By combining acid, spices and just a wee does of natural maple syrup in this recipe, we are tempting all taste buds and using the roasting of the vegetables to give us our satisfying base. The apple cider vinegar adds an active pH component that helps bellies process whatever your BBQ sauce might be covering. Though they look unassuming, even your spices are adding to the nutritional benefits of your food—take cumin, for example, which packs a wallop of iron and aid in digestion and production of pancreatic enzymes. So, skip the HFCS and let your spices pack the punch in your barbeque sauce!
