Yes it’s gluten free! The full name of it is Bold and Smoky Kansas City Style Barbecue Sauce. It also turns out that Trader Joe’s All Natural Barbecue Sauce is also gluten-free. Both of them, and that’s awesome.

Check out the photo below to see something else awesome that the Trader Joe’s near me is doing. See the little gluten-free signs on the shelves? It’s cool because you can literally walk through Trader Joe’s and see what is good to eat. Obviously, they don’t have it on everything, like say, nobody is going to be surprised to find that their organic strawberry jam is gluten-free. But they did have it on their spices, which is something that is a frequent question I think. (For the record, spices that do not have ingredients listed are safe because that means only the spice is present in the bottle.)

So let’s take a look at the ingredients: Tomato Puree (water, tomato paste), Sugar, molasses, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, Spices, Onion Powder, Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor, Garlic Powder, Caramel Color, Natural Flavor. It does have the standard warning about being made on equipment that is shared with wheat, soy, eggs, and peanuts. Some of you might have had warning lights go on about the Caramel Color in the list, but in the US they generally don’t make that with wheat. The other suspect ingredient is the smoke flavor. Smoke flavor may involve gluten and thus it is wise to contact a manufacturer if you’re not sure.

Trader Joe’s figures that a serving size is two tablespoons and you’ll get 60 calories out of that (all of which is basically sugar because it’s fat free) and 420 mg of salt. We were happy to find a BBQ sauce where the first ingredient wasn’t some kind of sugar, and especially happy that the form of sugar in the ingredients was just sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. To do a taste-test we decided to grill up some chicken thighs (recipe is coming soon) and we really liked it. We won’t kid you: we’re not barbecue sauce connoisseurs. BUT: It’s gluten-free BBQ sauce. It’s not too sweet. It looks, smells and tastes like barbecue sauce. It’s got a tangy savory garlicky flavor. If you find that you have a hankering for some meat with BBQ sauce, this is an excellent choice. We really loved the chicken we made with it and totally recommend it!

We want to know: Do you have a favorite gluten-free barbecue sauce? Have you tried the other Trader Joe’s BBQ sauce? Do you get upset (like we do) that most of the Trader Joe’s asian cooking sauces aren’t gluten-free? Let us know in the comments!

Times we have visited: 1 (So your mileage may vary.)
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: Same