Basic Honey-Garlic BBQ Sauce

My husband bought a little charcoal grill at Carrefour along with a big box of Chinese charcoal. Here in China, having a backyard BBQ is pretty much unheard of, though you can go get your lamb-kabob fix at the local muslim style street BBQ. Anyway, we wanted to have a full-on American style BBQ, so we set up the grill on the balcony of our apartment. Unfortunately, the Chinese charcoal wouldn't light, and sent clouds of smoke blowing into the hallway, which led to our neighbours calling security. A camouflage-clad guard came and pounded on our door, but apparently found it pretty funny after he realized what was happening. Chris just pretended not to speak any Chinese.

After that fiasco we decided to try again, but on our friend's balcony this time. Heh heh. Well this time it worked, and we were able to BBQ a piece of steak and some chicken kabobs. I whipped up a batch of homemade BBQ sauce to go with, since BBQ sauce is hard to find here (I think you can get it at Metro). Feel free to adjust the ingredients to taste.

Honey-Garlic BBQ Sauce

1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
splash of vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced
dash of chili powder
dash of black pepper
1 tbsp of olive oil

Cook the garlic in the oil until softened. Add remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat until thickened.

Pretty easy huh? And it tasted good too. We used this on the chicken kabobs and I used it again the other night to marinate and glaze some drumsticks which I baked in my little Chinese toaster oven (my substitute for a real oven). Yum!