Page 183 - Turkey Book from Meathead

Although we make a bottled KC-style sauce you can buy on AmazingRibs.com, if you are no longer living with your parents, you really should have a house sauce so that when your guests ask “what brand of sauce is that?” you can plunk a hand labeled bottle on the table. When they beg you for the recipe, you can then tell them “It's a secret” and mumble the old saw that ends in “and then I'd have to kill you.”
Although the original KC sauces were probably vinegary, hot, and not sweet, similar to Arthur Bryant's Original Barbeque Sauce, since the 1970s, the prototype has been KC Masterpiece -- tomato based, and sweet. The style has spread coast to coast and nowadays, when you say “barbecue sauce”, although there remain many regional and creative styles, most people think of the KC style.
The best sauces have multiple sources of sweetness (brown sugar, molasses, honey, and onion -- which gets sweet when it is cooked); multiple sources of tartness (vinegar, lemon juice, hot sauce, and steak sauce); multiple sources of heat (American chili powder, black pepper, mustard, and hot sauce); and it gets layers of flavor from all the above as well as ketchup, Worcestershire, garlic, and salt. Most Kansas City sauces are brass bands with multiple layers of flavors, sweets, and heats. Because they are thick and tomatoey, they sit on top of the meat, not penetrating very far. For this reason you don't want to use too much. Just one or two layers, max. Let the meat shine through. Don't drown it in sauce.
That's the idea behind this recipe. It's not KC Masterpiece, but it is a KC Classic. Try this recipe and you'll never use the