This Thanksgiving, trade in the tin can for this Easy Cranberry Sauce Recipe! Make a full flavored holiday cranberry sauce with tart cranberries, sweet cherries and zesty orange.
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Homemade Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving. I grew up eating the sauce shaped like a can and it was my favorite even back then. Several years ago I finally decided to give a homemade Cranberry Sauce Recipe a try . . . Mind Blown!
First of all, how did I not know how simple it is to make cranberry sauce at home? Second, you can add whatever flavors and ingredients you want. Make it tangy, sweet, savory or even spicy.
Last year I made Cranberry Apple Sauceand for this Thanksgiving I decided to make Cranberry Cherry Sauce. Both are great if you like your sauce to be sweet and tangy.
This post has two recipes for the price of one! Make a large batch of cranberry sauce and use some to make an extra Thanksgiving dessert.
And if you have any leftovers, be sure to check out my Cranberry Sauce Smoothie Recipe!
This Thanksgiving, trade in the tin can for this Easy Cranberry Sauce Recipe! Make a full flavored holiday cranberry sauce with tart cranberries, sweet cherries and zesty orange.
Ingredients
Cranberry Sauce
1 Cup Dark Cherry Juice
Juice and Zest of 1 Large Orange
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1 Cup Dried Cherries
24 oz Fresh Cranberries, sorted & cleaned
For Cranberries & Cream
1/2 Cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Cup Sugar
Cool Whip
Instructions
Cranberry Sauce
Combine the cherry juice, orange juice, zest, sugar and salt in a large saucepan.
Over medium heat, dissolve the sugar while stirring for about 3-4 minutes.
Add the cherries and cranberries. Partially cover pot with lid or foil to prevent spatter.
Cook for 10-12 minutes, stir frequently the last 5 minutes.
Remove from heat, transfer to a container and store in the refrigerator.
...........
For Cranberries and Cream
Leave about 2 cups of cranberry sauce in the pan and decrease the heat to medium/low.
Add the heavy cream and sugar.
Stir and heat until the sugar dissolves. (about 1-2 minutes)
Remove from heat, transfer to a container and refrigerate until cold.
Serve cold with generous amounts of Cool Whip!
Notes
This cranberry sauce and cranberry dessert are better if prepared the day before and refrigerated overnight.
Nutritional information on WonkyWonderful is provided as a courtesy and is approximate only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information given for any recipe on this site.
Cranberries and Cream will be a new and interesting Thanksgiving dessert option. And a little bit goes a long way!
I have been making my own for awhile now-love adding blueberries to mine along with orange. Love the idea of adding cream-thank you
Reply
Skysays
Made your recipe, wow wonderful!! I have never made cranberry (sauce) before, super easy and taste wonderful. PS l never was a cranberry kind of person. Side not I had someone who like marshmallow(s) in cranberry sauce, but l actually used the *mrshmallow gravy from your mashed sweet potato casserole, with the already creamed sauce. They loved loved it!!
Reply
Nicole Harrissays
I’m so glad you like it! I can eat homemade cranberry sauce by the bowl-full … especially with cream. I like your idea to use the marshmallow gravy. I’ll have to try that sometime!
Dear Evelyn: I had the same problem when I first started making my own cranberry sauce. I found out that you should cook them just until they pop. Further cooking will make them bitter, and once that happens, you need to start again.
Adding a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon or orange zest, a tablespoon of chopped candied peel, or even a splash of juice to your canned sauce will brighten flavors and bring in some homemade flavor.
"Instead, start by stirring in one tablespoon maple syrup and one teaspoon of a sweet drink like apple juice, orange juice, or fruity white or red wine.Add more to taste.Sprinkle with a pinch of salt (in small amounts, it intensifies sweetness)."
Homemade cranberry sauce is meant to thicken, or “jell,” while cooking. If it stays soupy, that could mean a couple of things. One possibility is that you may not have used enough sugar: Sugar helps the sauce firm up, so be sure to use the full amount called for in a recipe.
If your cranberry sauce is too thick, it's most likely overcooked. When you cook cranberries (or any berries), they burst, releasing pectin—a natural thickener. The key to a perfect consistency is to allow some but not all of the cranberries to split open—something you'll achieve with less time on the stove.
And that's because most homemade cranberry sauces are too bitter. Let me clarify: Cranberries are inherently bitter. That's why we don't eat them raw by the handful like, say, blueberries or cherries.
If your cranberry sauce comes out tasting too bitter, don't reach for the sugar. Granulated sugar might make the situation worse, especially if you don't have time to reheat the sauce so the sugar can dissolve properly. Instead, reach for another sweetener: maple syrup.
Why didn't my cranberry sauce thicken? Cranberries have a lot of natural pectin, the ingredient that makes cooked fruit gel. To release that pectin, you need to cook the berries until they burst and can form a bond with the sugar.
How Do You Neutralize Sour Taste in Food? If a dish is too sour, add a little bit of sugar! Sweetness balances out sour flavors, so if something makes your mouth pucker, a dash of sugar may help soften the blow of the sour food.
Sweetness: From sugar, honey, fruits or otherwise, sweetness will counteract bitter and sour flavours. It can also be used to cut down the heat of a particularly spicy meal. Saltiness: Salt plays two very important roles in flavouring a dish.
The cans are "filled and labeled upside down with the rounded edge on top and the sharp can-like edge on the bottom to keep the jelly whole." This creates an air bubble vacuum on the rounded side (the top) so customers "can swipe the edge of the can with a knife to break the vacuum and the log will easily slide out."
Why is my cranberry sauce so seedy? Cranberries do have seeds inside them. Sometimes, when using frozen cranberries, if it does not cook long enough, the seeds may not break down. This can cause the sauce to taste seedy.
Should cranberry sauce be served warm or cold? You could, of course, serve it straight out of the pot, but I think it's best after it's chilled in the fridge. Chilling it helps it firm up some more in the fridge, plus, serving it this way means you can make it days ahead of a holiday.
Use a candy thermometer to test the sauce: You can be certain the sauce is ready to gel when the syrup reaches 217°F (103°C). If you cook it to a higher temperature than this, too much water evaporates and the gel will be rubbery in texture.
A good cranberry sauce should be tart with balanced sweetness. It should have distinct cranberry flavor—complementary notes like cinnamon, allspice, and citrus are welcome, as long as they didn't overpower the berry.
Cranberry sauce is supposed to be a balance of sweet and tart. The sauce acts as a cleansing port in a tumultuous storm of fat and salt, but the effect is lost if the sauce is too sweet. Luckily, there is a very easy way to fix an over-sugared homemade sauce: You just need a little citric acid.
Cranberries are naturally sour, so some brands add sugar to cranberry juice and dried cranberries. This makes it taste better but impacts how healthy they are. So for example, a cup of raw cranberries has 4 grams of sugar, but a cup of dried cranberries has nearly 90 grams.
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