The Red Sauce is Coming!
The Red Sauce is Coming!
Celebrate MA250 with CommonWealth Kitchen’s Cranberry Bourbon BBQ Sauce, made in Massachusetts with locally grown cranberries, local maple syrup and bourbon.
There has never been a Massachusetts without cranberries.
12,000 years ago - long before there were 13 colonies — the Wampanoag people utilized wild cranberries (called sasumuneash) as a source of food and medicine. Whether eaten fresh, included in a preserved meat dish called pemmican, or used to fight off fevers and swelling, the cranberry was a staple for local indigenous people.
By 1816, commercial cultivation of the cranberry was underway in Dennis, MA. Captain Henry Hall, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, figured out that the wild cranberries on his property grew better when the sand blew over them. He started replanting the cranberry vines and spreading sand on them. Today, cranberries are the number one food crop in Massachusetts, contributing an annual economic impact of $1.7 billion.
The Red Sauce is Coming Cranberry Bourbon BBQ sauce
celebrates the rich - and delicious - history of the cranberry in Massachusetts and on Wampanoag land and introduces a new signature BBQ sauce to market. The sauce is a project of CommonWealth Kitchen, a Dorchester-based nonprofit food business development center, in collaboration with Meet Boston, the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Alliance, Boston Food Hub, Fresh Meadows Farm, and Bully Boy Bourbon.
This revolutionary new sauce is Massachusetts through and through: made in Dorchester with cranberries from Fresh Meadows Farm in Carver - a third-generation, Cape Verdean immigrant-owned and operated cranberry farm, bourbon from Bully Boy Bourbon in Roxbury, plus local maple syrup and surplus Massachusetts-grown tomatoes. Tart, sweet, with a hint of spice, the Red Sauce is a fitting celebration of 250 years of innovation at the heart of our beloved Commonwealth
