This recipe is really good for the beginning sauce maker, given that the hardest part about the recipe is cutting the cherries in half and removing the pits. When you are getting to the blending portion of this lovely recipe, you can of course move it to a blender or food processor, but an immersion blender is your best bet. If you put this sauce in a food processor while it’s hot, there’s a strong chance that you will pop the top off of the thing thanks to the built-up pressure inside and you will have cherry stains all over your walls, clothing, and countertops. Cherry stains are pretty tough to get out, especially when they are as darkly pigmented as the black cherries in this recipe are.

The two most interesting parts of this sauce, flavor wise, are the balsamic vinegar and the teaspoon of Chipotle Meco Powder Jeff added. If you are not super fond of chile powders, you could eliminate that part, but you will really be taking away one of the absolute stars of this recipe. Try it with the Chipotle Meco Powder even if chiles aren’t your thing and you may find yourself converted to a baby chilehead.

We served our Cherry Balsamic BBQ sauce on some roasted chicken and all of our taste testers thought it was quite good. This sauce would also be excellent on rice, or even some roasted vegetables. Use it pretty much anywhere you would use your standard barbeque sauce.

Makes 24 servings.