Wajos Balsamic Roasted Onion Sauce with Piment d'Espelette. Dark, sweet, smoky, and quietly spicy – the barbecue sauce that also doubles as an onion sauce for roasts.
Wajos Balsamic Roasted Onion Sauce with Piment d'Espelette is a dark barbecue sauce made from brown cane sugar, tomato paste, 12 percent Aceto Balsamico di Modena PGI, onions, smoked salt, and 0.2 percent Piment d'Espelette, 245 ml from Dohr on the Moselle. It's not ketchup, not a spicy chili sauce, and not liquid onion soup, but a thick sauce between barbecue and balsamic. Vegan.
Balsamic Roasted Onion Sauce from Wajos solves a problem every barbecue night faces: ketchup is too bland, barbecue sauce is too smokily American, and homemade onion sauce takes half an hour. This bottle sits right in between. It tastes of balsamic and roasted onions, is sweet, has a hint of smoke, and finishes with the mild warmth of Basque Piment d'Espelette. It's a perennial favorite for us and listed as a bestseller at Wajos itself. The reason: the sauce pairs just as well with steak as it does with bratwurst and Sunday gravy.
Sweet and dark like balsamic, with roasted onions, smoke, and a bit of heat
The sauce is dark brown and thick, almost like a crema. You taste the sweetness first. Brown cane sugar is the primary ingredient, and with a good 37 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters, the sauce is clearly sweet, like a barbecue sauce. Those trying it for the first time will think of a dark balsamic crema with onions – and they’d be pretty much right. Then comes the 12 percent balsamic from Modena – the dark, winey acidity that prevents it from tasting like syrup. The roasted onion comes from onions and natural onion flavoring, the smoke from smoked salt.
And the Piment d'Espelette? That is the chili from the French Basque country, more fruity-warm than hot. At 0.2 percent, it remains in the background rather than the foreground in this sauce: you notice a gentle warmth on the palate, and that's it. Anyone expecting a spicy barbecue sauce would be better off with the Patatas Bravas Hot Dip, which contains over 30 percent chili. The sauce contains barley malt and thus gluten, as well as sulfites from the wine vinegar.
For steak, bratwurst, burgers, and as a quick onion sauce
At the grill, it’s the dip for everything dark: beef steak, pork neck steak, bratwurst, spareribs. A dollop on the plate is enough; the sauce is rich. On a burger, it replaces both ketchup and fried onions – with cheddar and pickles, this is the burger the teenagers at our place always order. For grilled cheese or grilled vegetables like zucchini and eggplant, it adds the dark, sweet note that is otherwise missing. And for those making baked potatoes with sour cream, just put the bottle right next to them – the combination of cold dip and dark sauce works perfectly.
In the kitchen, it turns into an onion sauce: add two to three tablespoons to the pan drippings from beef, pork, or roulades, deglaze with a little water or broth, bring to a brief boil, and you’re done. That’s a Sunday roast gravy in five minutes, and it tastes like braised onions even though your cutting board stays clean. A spoonful in a finished gravy or goulash adds color, sweetness, and depth. Use it with fried potatoes and a fried egg, on a Leberkäse roll, or in the pan with sautéed onions and mushrooms – anywhere roasted onions and balsamic belong.
It also works as a marinade, but with caution: the sugar will burn at high heat. Brush the meat with it and apply only in the final minutes on the grill, or brush it on at the end. It is not suitable for anything that should remain light and fresh – fish, poultry with lemon, or salads. And once opened, the bottle belongs in the refrigerator.
Our tip: Pan-fried bratwurst with the roasted onion sauce and a roll – or on fries with a little mayonnaise; it’s the dark version of currywurst fries.
Balsamic from a family that has been making wine for 15 generations
The sauce comes from Wajos, a gourmet manufacturer in Dohr near Cochem on the Moselle. The name is an abbreviation: Walter Josef Oster, founder of a winemaking family in Ediger-Eller that has been cultivating wine for 15 generations. From a liqueur distillery in the 1980s, his son Peter Oster and his partner Ulf Schwichtenberg turned it into a brand that today carries around 900 items. Over 80 employees work in Dohr, and the first Wajos store opened in Trier in 2008.
The fact that balsamic plays a leading role in a barbecue sauce from winemakers fits the company: wine vinegar and grape must are the foundation of many Wajos products, from cremas to sauces. Like most Wajos items, the sauce is produced in Dohr and tested in their in-house laboratory. Wajos describes their own operation as "controlled small" – a family business rather than a sauce factory.
The sauce for grill enthusiasts and those who lack the time for homemade onion sauce
The roasted onion sauce is the bottle for everyone who wants more depth than ketchup at the grill. It is milder in smoke than a hickory sauce and milder in heat than a chili sauce – the dark, sweet middle ground. And it’s for anyone who needs a gravy during the week that tastes like more than just powdered mix. As a gift, it fits perfectly into a barbecue pack alongside the Barbecue Sauce with Hickory Smoked Salt for the smoky side and the Peach Sauce with Whisky for the fruity side. You can find all sauces on our Wajos page.
The 245 ml bottle keeps for a long time unopened in a cool, dark place, and for weeks in the refrigerator after opening. The sauce is not suitable for those looking for a light, low-sugar barbecue sauce – it is sweet, and that is part of its character.
Balsamic, roasted onion, smoke, and a touch of Piment d'Espelette – the dark sauce from the Moselle that reaches from the grill to the Sunday roast.
