Nearly all of us will end up with leftovers from Thanksgiving. Whether you’re hosting or being sent home with food, there always seemsto be an abundance of Thanksgiving leftovers. As a result, every year I try to come up with ways to re-invent Thanksgiving leftovers. My hope is that this recipe helps you target what leftovers to snag this Thanksgiving!
After a long discussion with my cousin, who is a great cook, we settled on a cranberry BBQ sauce. We thought with tailgating season in full swing, it might be a fun and great twist on traditional BBQ. Full disclosure, I was a vegetarian for about 10 years so I’m not the best at understanding what is popular for BBQ. Don’t worry. My cousin was the main driver this year and her cooking is definitely reliably good. That being said, I did a test run with Chicken thighs and it was pretty spectacular. I’m thinking that darker meats might be a better fit for the acidic, tart, cranberries.
In all honesty, I looked at Ina Garten’s BBQ sauce recipe and made minor adjustments. I generally believe that she makes a fantastic version of most things. It’s not peculiar, but always good and familiar. I made her BBQ sauce and had a ratio of one cup of BBQ sauce to one tablespoon of cranberry sauce. I brought both to a boil and let simmer to ensure that the flavors mixed together. The flavor provided a mild sense of tartness to the BBQ sauce. Down the road, I might double the cranberry sauce. It all depends on how adventurous I and my guests are.