• 2 Tablespoons butter
  • 1 cup Dr. Pepper (or your favorite cola or root beer)
  • 1 heaping cup pecan halves
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (or a large pinch of table salt)

Directions

  1. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil or a silicone mat. Preheat oven to 300.
  2. In a medium saucepan (nonstick works perfect here), bring the butter and pop to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the mixture is reduced in half, about 15 minutes. Add the pecans and salt and stir constantly until the liquid is reduced to a thick syrup, about 4 minutes.
  3. Pour pecans in a single layer onto prepared pan and bake for about 10 minutes, stirring at least once, until toasted, but watch carefully the last few minutes as they can go from browned to burned rather quickly. Allow to cool on pan before removing and eating.

I was flipping through a cookbook the other day when a recipe for Dr. Pepper Pecans caught my attention. With a little research I realized this isn’t a unique idea, apparently people in the South have been coating pecans in a soda pop concoction for sometime. Well, this was new to me. Up here in Northwest we tend to coat everything in espresso, but somehow pop plus pecans seems like a better choice.

I am not a high fructose corn syrup fan, so naturally I am not a soda pop fan. I am sure you can imagine the shock and awe that was created in my kitchen as I unloaded the grocery bags: organic unsweetened soy milk, pineapple, pears, a bag of onions, a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper? (And had I been thinking I would have shopped around more and found a can). I could tell by my kids faces that they were thinking Mom must have lost her mind.

And maybe I did…just a little. Because these Pecans are crazy good, without tasting exactly like Dr. Pepper. I am not sure people could actually guess that pop was an ingredient. And the fun part is you could mix the flavor up by using your preferred pop, like root beer, Cherry Coke, Vanilla Dr Pepper and so on. Yummy.

These Soda Pop Pecans are really easy to make and would would be a fun food at your next party or the perfect food gift (if you can stop yourself from eating them).

This recipe only makes about 1 cup of pecans, so you’ll need to double or triple the batch if you want to share these. I liked the small quantity as it creates portion control. Let’s be honest if you didn’t make more, you can’t eat more : )

Does anyone else have delicious recipe using pop?

The original recipe had you bake these at 350, which was way too high in my opinion (some of mine actually burned). I would reduce the temperature to 300, or lower if you know your oven runs hot, and just bake them an extra few minutes if needed.

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