How To Remove Greasy BBQ Sauce Stains With A Pantry Staple

Nothing gets our mouths watering like barbecue, especially when thinking about the unique regional BBQ styles across the United States. But whether you're feasting on pulled pork in Memphis or Korean-style BBQ ribs in Hawaii, or enjoying your perfected sweet and tangy barbecue sauce at home, there's a common headache to deal with after the meal: stains.

All too often, you finish eating and come up from your state of food bliss to see sauce on your favorite shirt. It's notoriously hard to get out — but not impossible. Go back to indulging in barbecue with reckless abandon, because with some distilled white vinegar, even the most stubborn stains don't stand a chance.

The very first thing you want to do is try to lift as much of the stain out as possible — do this whether you're moving forward with the rest of the process or taking the clothing to a dry cleaner if it's dry clean only. Use a spoon or even a credit card edge to gently lift up the excess, then blot with a paper towel dampened with cool water. Then, as long as you're not working with a dry clean-only item, pretreat the stain with vinegar before machine-washing. Mix vinegar and cool water at a 1:2 ratio and put it in a spray bottle. Saturate the fabric with this mixture, let it sit for 10 minutes, then wash according to the label's directions. That pretreatment will ensure your clothing comes out squeaky clean.

You may think of vinegar as a cooking essential, but it's just as necessary and worthwhile to have on hand for its cleaning ability. The same acidity it brings to tasty salad dressings works wonders when it comes to removing stains that nothing else seems to be able to. Vinegar is one of the most foolproof tricks for cleaning your kitchen sink. It works with salt to make even the crustiest grill plates shine like new. There are all kinds of kitchen cleaning hacks with vinegar, from scrubbing your coffee maker to de-rusting your cast iron skillet to preventing countertop stains. 

Vinegar is acidic because of how it's made — it's the product of fermentation, where yeast transforms carbohydrates' sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol, which is then fermented again with a bacteria called acetobacter into a combination of acetic acid and water. That acid breaks down even the toughest materials causing stains, build-up, and discoloration. But because it's not a harsh chemical, it doesn't simultaneously wear away at the thing you're actually cleaning. So you can rest assured when working with your barbecue sauce-splashed shirt that a mixture of white distilled vinegar and water will get the job done while preserving the fabric.