A delicious take on the classic Cranberry Sauce side dish that requires only 3 ingredients, 3 steps, and 15 minutes! No more gelatinous canned cranberry sauce on the holiday table – this easy homemade cranberry sauce is about to become your family’s favorite!
The season of festivities, family gatherings, and special home-cooked meals is officially upon us! To prepare you for the ultimate day of feasting, here’s an easy homemade cranberry sauce recipe that you can include in your lineup.
Here in the Live Eat Learn world cranberries have been the talk of the town recently! They’re a pretty resilient little fruit. My favorite cranberry fact? The same vines can produce berries for over a hundred years!
But, back to the recipe. This cranberry sauce is made with only three ingredients, and you can use your choice of fresh or frozen crans! We’ll offset the bitterness with some sugar and finish it off with tangy orange juice. The three flavors combined taste delicious and are something that even the kiddos will enjoy.
Ingredients in this cranberry sauce recipe
For this dish you’ll need only three ingredients, which is pretty sweet if you ask me!
Cranberries: First up are the cranberries. You’ll need about 4 cups, so a 12 oz bag should do. You can go with either fresh or frozen.
Orange Juice: Next is 1 cup of orange juice. This adds a zesty, tangy flavor that pairs perfectly with the slight bitterness of the berries.
Sugar: Finally, finish off the sauce with ½ cup of sugar. Not only does it add a sweetness, it offsets a good portion of the bitterness that cranberries usually have.
How to make cranberry sauce
Cranberry sauce is ready in just 15 minutes and requires only three simple steps: combine, cook, and cool!
Step 1: Combine the ingredients To begin, add everything to a large pot.
Step 2: Cook the sauce Cover the pot and cook, stirring occasionally. Cook until the cranberries burst (about 10 minutes). The cranberries will look something like this when finished cooking, and will continue thickening as it cools.
Step 3: Cool and let thicken Remove the cranberries from the heat and let cool completely. It will thicken as it cools!
The perfect prep-ahead side dish
Homemade cranberry sauce is one of those dishes that tastes better with time. When you let it sit in the fridge overnight (or even for a day or two), it allows the flavors to really blend together! Feel free to make this a few days before you’ll need it. Just cover and stick in the fridge!
Mix and match ingredients
Something cool about fruit sauce is that you can use similar combos of the same ingredients for totally different flavors! For instance, you can actually sub in strawberries if that’s more your thing. You’ll just need less sugar because strawberries are already much sweeter than cranberries.
Additionally, you don’t have to use sugar for the sweetener! Honey tastes delicious, as does brown sugar! I recommend using a bit less to start, and then adding to taste if needed.
More cranberry recipes
Whether you’re looking for a breakfast, snack, or dessert option, there’s a cranberry recipe for that.
And be sure to use this homemade cranberry sauce in our Loaded Sweet Potato Rounds (with Cranberry and Goat Cheese) or dolloped onto this Cranberry Orange Oatmeal!
Jelling. 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.
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.
The average number of cranberries used per can of sauce is 200. If you lay out all the cans of sauce consumed in a year from end to end, it would stretch 3,385 miles.
Spirits are a wonderful addition to cranberry sauce, but remember that a little goes a long way. Go with spirits and fortified wines used to make other sauces, and start with port, sherry, madeira, marsala, sweet vermouth, or even bourbon. Add it to your sauce a teaspoon at a time until you get the flavor you want.
You may have added too much liquid to the cranberries. In addition to pectin, cranberries contain water, which means you only need to add a splash of liquid to get the cooking going. Add too much and you'll be stirring at the stove much longer than expected.
Yes! Cranberry sauce requires a minimum of 2 hours in the refrigerator in order for it to thicken and set properly. However, you can make this holiday side dish up to a week in advance. Just be sure to store it in an airtight container.
What to do if the cranberry sauce is too thin or loose. If you inadvertently added too much water, simply bring the cranberry sauce back to the stove top and bring it to a low boil, cooking it down just a bit to help thicken it up.
But why? Ocean Spray says this is to get the cranberry sauce out in one intact piece. “The rounded part of the can that looks like the bottom has an air bubble in it,” Ocean Spray's representative explains. The bubble is there so you can “break the seal the sauce makes with the can.”
When to Toss Cranberry Sauce. Cranberry sauce will last for two hours at room temperature. Homemade cranberry sauce will last in the fridge for 10 to 14 days. Canned cranberry sauce that has been opened will last up to a week in the fridge.
Cranberries and cranberry products are usually safe for most people if consumed in moderation. However, excessive consumption may cause stomach upset and diarrhea — and may also increase the risk of kidney stones in predisposed individuals.
Why won't my cranberry sauce gel? Boiling is critical to release pectin, the key gelling ingredient, from the cranberry. You must cook the sauce for at least 10 minutes at a full boil for the pectin to react with the sugar and create the proper gelled texture.
While there are some editors who prefer homemade cranberry sauce, the canned variety also has quite a following. "There's something so beautifully perfect about the texture of canned cranberry sauce, and none of those homemade mess will ever compete," says Senior Digital Food Editor Kimberly Holland.
How do you thicken up cranberry sauce? Cranberries contain natural pectin and will gel without any additions. Cook until the berries pop to release the juices and then simmer another 5 minutes or so. It will not seem thick then but will thicken as it cools.
When the cranberries are heated, the berries begin to break down and pop open. The pectin is then released and reacts with the sugar and juices to form long polymers and thicken the sauce. This process creates the cranberry sauces and jellies which are so familiar at holiday dinners.
In a small cup make a slurry with cornstarch and 1 tablespoon water. Whisk cornstarch mixture into cranberry sauce and cook, whisking, until sauce thickens. Taste and add more sugar, if necessary.
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