It’s no secret that Bobby Flay’s culinary expertise spans many types of foods and cuisines. After all, he has both a French and Italian restaurant and yet became famous for his Southwestern cuisine. However, the celebrity chef is perhaps best known for his grilling skills, which he has showcased on his many barbecue cooking shows, including “Bobby Flay’s Barbecue Addiction,” “BBQ Brawl,” “BBQ Blowout” and “Grill It With Bobby Flay.” He clearly has the skills to make his own barbecue sauce, and while he often opts for it, he doesn’t disdain store-bought either. Of course, he doesn’t use it straight from the bottle and jazzes it up with a few extra ingredients, as he shared in a clip from “BBQ Brawl” posted to YouTube.

When Flay makes barbecue sauce from scratch, he likes to add ingredients like pinot noir and even peanut butter. But he only adds Worcestershire sauce, canned chipotle puree or freshly squeezed lime juice to store-bought sauces. While the end result isn’t quite the same as homemade barbecue sauce, adding these ingredients gives store-bought sauce a more complex, refined flavor.

Read more: The 15 Best Store-Bought Barbecue Sauces, Ranked

The 3 ingredients for a better barbecue sauce

While store-bought barbecue sauce is convenient, it often lacks the depth of flavor of homemade sauce, which typically needs to simmer for a while to fully develop flavors. As Bobby Flay explains in BBQ Brawl, you can easily boost the umami flavor of a barbecue sauce by adding a splash of Worcestershire sauce. That’s because of the glutamate-rich combination of fermented ingredients, including fermented onions, fermented garlic, pickled anchovies, and tamarind paste.

To mimic the flavor of traditional smoking methods, store-bought barbecue sauce often contains large amounts of liquid smoke, giving it an artificial-tasting smoky flavor. That’s where adding chipotle puree comes in. Chipotle puree is actually made from smoked jalapeños, so the flavor isn’t artificially smoky, but “like you smoked your barbecue sauce,” notes Flay. He adds about a tablespoon of it, but you can use more or less depending on your taste.

Since store-bought barbecue sauce can be too sweet, adding lime juice—ideally freshly squeezed from half a lime—can tone down that sweetness. Barbecue sauce already contains vinegar, so Flay prefers to use limes because they offer a fresher, bolder flavor.

Bobby Flay’s Tips for Spiceing Up Store-Bought Barbecue Sauce

Worcestershire sauce, chipotle puree and lime juice can certainly make a big difference when added to a store-bought barbecue sauce, but Flay advises starting with a higher-quality base, like a locally made barbecue sauce. The one barbecue sauce he can’t live without is the Bone Suckin’ brand, he revealed during a tour of his pantry on Instagram.

Since not all barbecue sauces taste the same, you can use more than just these three ingredients. In an interview with Today, Flay said that you can always add a dash of hot sauce if it’s not spicy enough, or a little honey if you want it a little sweeter, depending on your taste. If the sauce is too thick, he also recommends adding a splash of water.

No matter what combination of ingredients you choose, it’s best to heat the ingredients together in a pot. Flay simmers them for 10 to 15 minutes, as he said on the “BBQ Brawl” episode. Theoretically, you could mix the ingredients while they’re cold, but simmering allows the flavors to blend seamlessly. When the barbecue sauce is heated through, the flavors are much more pronounced.

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