Roasted Cranberry Slaw – A Winter & Holiday Hit

by R.B. Quinn and Min Merrell

Our Roasted Cranberry Slaw is a good example of how a recipe can evolve when you let lateral thinking lead you to new approaches and ideas. A few years ago we featured our oven-roasted cranberries—a savory version with onion and jalapeño, and a sweet version with apple and pecan. Every holiday since we’re the unapologetic roasted cranberry evangelists in the room because of the power of cranberries to transform into incredible little jewels of concentrated flavor. Our new approach is simply an extension of the underlying miracle (oven roasting) method.

Here’s how you start: in a baking dish, toss a bag of cranberries with one cup of sugar and two tablespoons of oil. Keep it pure or add a few ingredients like we did. Bake 30 minutes in a hot oven, let cool, and that’s it. We set out a little dish of the ruby red conserve all through the holiday season. Packed in a decorative jar, roasted cranberries make a wonderful hostess gift.

We later got on a duck-roasting jag and came up with the idea for pulled duck tacos. Slow roasted duck loves a little something sweet, so we tossed a batch of roasted cranberries with shredded cabbage and created a spectacular slaw for stuff in the tortillas with the duck. Smoky duck tacos with Roasted Cranberry Slaw was a hit at the holiday meal.

Roasted Cranberry Slaw will perform magic with almost any holiday meal, with or without duck. It pairs beautifully with roasted pork, grilled pork tenderloin, smoked turkey and chicken, and ham. And the tantalizing combination of sweet, savory, and crunchy will switch up your leftover turkey sandwich big time.

For a few solid tips on how to roast a smoky duck in the oven, go to cheaterchef.com and search “duck.” Pulled duck is the new pulled pork for the holiday feast lineup.

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