Why do BBQ sauce recipes specify that you must cook the sauce?
Most of the popular ingredients for BBQ sauce (vinegar/ketchup/sugar etc.) tend not to mix very well together. I know whenever I've made BBQ sauce, placing all of the ingredients into a pan together they tend to separate and are difficult to combine.

Heating up the ingredients, however, causes them to combine better, and after a short time cooking they will bind together and give a more consistent texture/taste. Otherwise the different ingredients may continue to separate even when mixed, and you may find clumps of sugar that have not dissolved into the liquid etc.

It's quite possible your BBQ sauce recipe doesn't need cooking, so long as things are substituted (like sugar for sugar syrup or honey) in order to combine better, but this may well give an incorrect texture because of the change in ingredients.

Therefore if the ingredients you use can be combined without being heated, it's likely that it doesn't need cooking, however you may end up with an uneven flavor.



As pointed out in a comment by @ToddWilcox, there may also be constituent ingredients that do require cooking, such as garlic or onion, in order to achieve the correct flavor so that they do not taste raw.

Some sauces may also specify being cooked simply to make them thicker or more concentrated, as adding thickening agents such as flour may affect the taste, particularly if it is uncooked.

So whilst there are some BBQ sauce recipes that may get away with being uncooked based on their ingredients, there are others that will definitely require cooking.