Cranberry - BBQ Pulled Turkey GF/DF/SF

This was a monumental year for my family. We hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. We made a braised turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, gravy, green beans with bacon and a handful of pies. The whole dinner was gluten, dairy and soy free and tasted great. It was a lot of fun and we all ate good.

I will share the recipes for the main meal, but thought I would start with a great recipe I found for leftover turkey first.

I read The Daily on my iPad, the weekend addition this week had an article titled Leftover Makeover written by Bill Bradley. It included a series of recipes for leftovers from Joe Doren, head chef at Chicago's Franks 'n Dawgs. Lots of great ideas, but one stood out to me as a decent option for our allergies.

From The Daily, Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Pulled Turkey Sandwich

"kind of like pulled pork, but with turkey. Take about 3/4 cup of your leftover cranberry sauce, add 1 cup of bourbon and reduce that down until you cook off most of the alcohol but still get the bourbon flavor. Mix in your favorite barbecue sauce and simmer until it's warm. Shred up some of your turkey breast or turkey leg or whatever you have left over, and mix it with the sauce in the bowl. You traditionally get a slaw with a pulled pork sandwich, so you could do a slaw with cabbage and some shaved raw green beans mixed in with mayo to taste. Just put it on any sort of bun or leftover rolls you might have"

This looked intriguing so I gave it a shot. Here is what I used...

3/4 cup homemade cranberry relish
1 cup Pendleton Whiskey (locally bottled canadian blend)
1/2 cup homemade "Red Neck" BBQ sauce


I put the relish and whiskey in a sauce pan over medium heat. I let the sauce reduce for 5 min, long enough for the alcohol to burn off but still retain the flavor.

My kids are a little finicky so rather than leaving the sauce chunky I threw it in the vita-mix to smooth it out.

I put the sauce back into the sauce pan and added the BBQ sauce, bringing it all back up to a simmer.

I added about 3 cups of diced dark meat. To be honest dark meat is not my favorite, I used it in case the recipe didn't turn out :) 

With the chicken and sauce combined, it was now time to find something to put it on...

I ended up with pan fried corn tortillas. I am sure someone can correct me on the right way to warm these up, but I usually use a non stick pan or griddle at medium heat. I drizzle a little oil and sprinkle salt in the pan, then I add the tortillas and move them around to pick up the salt. I heat them until the bubbles in the tortillas start to expand, then flip them and wait for the same from the other side. This has been a normal replacement for bread for me. I will put all sorts of sandwichy ingredients in there, but I digress...

I added a little of the bbq turkey to the hot tortilla, folded it over and went to town...

It was great. It had a sweet smokey taste to it that is very tough to explain. Here is the real kicker... my kids couldn't get enough of it. The portion I made was devoured in a little under 10 minutes by my family.

On the second pass I added a little fresh cranberry sauce on top like a salsa. If I had cabbage, I would have shredded that and used it as well.

All in all this is a very simple recipe and very tasty. I made it again at my parents house later that day and we used it as a dip for tortilla chips. I could also easily see this as the topping on a pizza. The turkey is good and timely but you could use the same recipe with leftover chicken, beef or pork just as easily.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Stay Hungry!