Delicious Sugar-Free Cranberry Sauce (With Canning Instructions) and Dried Cranberries Recipes!

Regular dried cranberries and cranberry sauce are loaded with sugar. We can do so much better!

Whether you’re low carb, keto, diabetic, cutting back on sugar or just watching your calories these cranberry recipes can fit your diet/lifestyle.

Two cranberry sauce recipes, one with pectin and one without pectin. Canning instructions included. Plus, I tested 5 sugar-free dried cranberry recipes to find the two best.

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The Allulose brand I use for all of these recipes: https://amzn.to/46KMDt3

No Pectin Cranberry Sauce Original Source: https://www.neverfreefarm.com/2022/11/19/canning-sugar-free-cranberry-sauce/ NOTE that I use Allulose instead of Splenda. See article on Splenda here: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/sucralose-a-common-artificial-sweetener-may-increase-cancer-risk

Cranberry Sauce with Pectin Original Source: https://www.healthycanning.com/cranberry-sauce. NOTE that I use Allulose instead of sugar in this recipe.

All Day I Dream About Food (Carolyn McKetchum) Dried Cranberries recipe: https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/dried-cranberries/#recipe NOTE that I used the Allulose brand listed above for all of the sweetener in this recipe.

Wholesome Yum (Maya Krampf) Dried Cranberries Recipe: https://www.wholesomeyum.com/recipes/how-to-make-dried-cranberries-no-sugar/ NOTE that I used the Allulose brand listed above for this recipe.

Altitude Adjustments for Water bath and Pressure Canning: https://www.ballmasonjars.com/adjust-high-altitude-canning.html

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So I have been kneee in Cranberries the past several days I’ve done a ton of recipes couple of canning recipes one is my all-time favorite standby cranberry sauce recipe another one was new to me we’re going to try it today and then I also had a request for some sugar-free

Dried cranberries so those are a little bit trickier but I do have a couple of options for you I have tried I think five different versions of those and some of them are are you know laughably disastrous but I do have a couple that worked pretty well so we’re going to

Talk about those today and I’m going to show you my cranberry sauce canning recipe and one other that I found that I think is going to be terrific so welcome to G preserve I’m Carter and I’m so glad you’re here today so let’s get started I

Filmed all of this while I was testing everything so I’m going to kind of walk you through what I did for each recipe I’m not going to take you through the recipes that did not work uh and there were there were three of those and and in fact hang on I’ll show you

One while we’re talking about laughable cranberry results let me show you this one this is another one um yeah not exactly what I was going for and this is by a source I’m not going to tell you about it because you know there’s a possibility this could

Have been user error but anyway it was it’s from a source I’ve made several of their recipes before and I’ve never had a problem but this was this was not what I was going for so as you see down here I did find much better options so we’re

Going to talk about those today and I’ll show you how I made those and we’ll just we’ll just pretend that these don’t exist here all right so I want to go through the cranberry sauce first and I want to do a taste test my normal one

That I do has no PCT in I like it’s kind of a I don’t if you can see the set on that it’s a medium I call it a medium set you can see a little bit of movement in that I hope I’ll try to zoom in on that if I

Can and let me find the other one that’s cold and then this is the one with pectin so this is a firm full set on this one so this is the one I always use and I you know I love it it’s terrific but I also like a firm set

Cranberry sauce sometimes too and I thought some of you might as well so I found this one it uses Pomona pum I’m going to bring you in close and we’re going to take a taste of these now both of these I put in the refrigerator last night not for set or anything but

Because I prefer my cranberry sauce cold so I didn’t want to automatically have a bias against something because it wasn’t cold so I’m going to bring you in and we’re going to try these all right these two didn’t get their full label because they were in the fridge last night but

This one you can see says no pectin and this one says nothing so that one has pectin in it so let’s open these I’m going to keep these a little bit separated here so we don’t lose track okay that one has no PCT so you

Can see it it just moves around a little bit it’s a pretty decent set let’s take a look at it with a spoon that’s a pretty decent set there it’s very well gelled nice and thick this one is pacton and this is Pomona’s pacton you see that one is not going

Anywhere so let’s cut into this one so that one is it’s a bit firmer when you pull it out but it’s not you know as a kid we used to get those jars with the jellied cranberry and they just you know did a little sucking sound as they

Popped out of the jar and you kind of ate it it was like Jell-O consistency this is not that all right we’re going to try both of these I will say that my usual one has some cinon in it and I do really like it with cinnamon so I’ll try not to let

That bias me let’s take a taste see that one’s delicious I love that one and that explains why I make it year after year after year all right this is the one with the PCT in well honestly I don’t taste that much difference in the consistency at all

This one is not as sweet and I do miss the cinnamon in it but it’s a it’s a little bit firmer set but not that much let get a clean spoon okay there’s that one that’s pretty decent hold and that’s a pretty decent hole I don’t know I don’t see that much

Difference between the Peca and the nocum it’s more the flavoring this one had more allulose in it and it had that cinnamon that I like so let’s go through I’m going to show you how to make both of these and you can pick your preference okay the first one we’re

Going to do is the one that I always make this is the one with no pacum it adds cinnamon so this one originally came from a website called Never free Farm the original recipe on this one made six 8 oz jars I’m going to give you

A small batch version on this one to make sure that you like it because it does use quite a bit of ailos and as you probably know AOS is is pricey so let’s make sure you like it before you decide to use it the other thing I will say is

That this recipe originally used uh sucralose and I don’t I don’t use sucralose it’s you know it’s one of those things it’s approved for canning but it’s approved for canning because someone paid for it to be studied to be approved for canning it is not necessarily one that is healthy so USDA

Approved it for canning but all the studies now are coming out that is is not the healthiest thing for you so I choose to use aulos so the small batch version I’m going to give you and the one you’re going to see in the video is

A quarter of the recipe so it made for me three4 pint jars so I used one cup of water one cup of allulose a tiny pinch of sea salt 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a half pound of fresh cranberries you want to combine those first four ingredients the

Water the iOS the sea salt and the ground cinnamon bring that to a boil and let it boil for 5 minutes make sure that the alose is dissolved then we’re going to throw in your washed and sorted cranberries and then we’re going to bring it back to a boil for 15 more

Minutes they’re going to start to burst you’re going to start to see them thicken up as that pectin develops in there we’re going to fill hot jars to a/4 inch head space then we’re going to process them in a water bath or Steam caner for 15 minutes I used my Steam

Caner for this so I actually had the process for 15 minutes turned off the burner and let it sit with the lid on for 5 minutes and then remove the jars if you’re using a water bath caner you want to process it for 15 minutes turn

Off the burner lift off the lid and let them sit for 5 minutes and then you can take them out so either way they all sealed absolutely beautifully they all taste fantastic I don’t know it’s my favorite if you try it you let me know if you like

That all right let’s move on to the one with the pcon so this next recipe using ponus pectin is from a website called healthy canning tocom it’s not an official Pamona pcan recipe if there is such a thing so it’s written a little bit differently than

The recipes in the P pectin cookbook you know in there in that cookbook everything has you have to measure out four cups of something and then you get four to five 8 oz jelly jars of finished product so this one there was no there was no measuring the cooked down

Cranberry sauce so it did save a step saved an extra dish I was a bit concerned it wasn’t going to work but it seems to work just fine you know as I mentioned it’s not a super hard set okay so let me run through this recipe

For you and I’ll give you some footage of how it went so three cups of cranberries and these can be either fresh or frozen 1 and 1/2 cups of water 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of pomot pectin 1 teaspoon of calcium water and that is something that comes in the box of

Pomona ptin so if you buy that the little blue box or if you buy it bulk order however you do your pomono pant in there will be a little package with instructions on how to mix the calcium water and I have calcium water in my refrigerator that has been floating

Around my goodness for seven or eight months and it can really float around your refrigerator indefinitely as long as it stays refrigerator and then this recipe is a low sugar version it uses a/2 cup of white sugar well in all of the Pomona Pon recipes in their cookbook and on

Their website I’ve never used any sugar in mine I always substitute with AOS and I’ve never had any issues with things not setting or not working right or not tasting right or whatever you may want to add a little more allulose then you add sugar because as you probably know

It is only 70% as sweet as sugar so you might want to adjust up a bit on your alus so the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to wash those cranberries get rid of any that looked kind of rough and you know quite frankly

In my cranberries this year there were a lot that looked pretty rough all right then we’re going to put those cranberries and the water into a stainless steel pot put it on the stove bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 10 minutes until those cranberries

Are softening and popping we’re going to remove it from the stove now this is where my process differed from theirs a little bit they got a little convoluted taking out some of the cranberry P putting it in a bowl whisking it the pectin adding dollop I don’t know that

Was a bit much for me so as I always do when I’m using Pomona pcon I mixed my Pon very well into the aulus just Stir It Around stir it around it’s absolutely fine while that is sitting there waiting for you add the calcium water into the

Pot with the cranberry and water then put it back on the stove bring it to a full boil and then we’re going to add add that Sugar pectin or ailos pectin mixture to the cranberry sauce very slowly so couple spoonsful at a time would be absolutely fine get it in there

Make sure that everything dissolves that there no clumpies IIs doesn’t Clump but you don’t want that pcon to Clump up so if it is really well dispersed in the IIs you won’t have any problem as long as you stir it in really well and then we’re going to let it

Really kind of go at full boil for another minute you do get I find with this one a little bit of foam on top I didn’t worry about it you saw it when I opened the jar it really wasn’t anything to speak of but you’re going to ladle it

Into hot jars same way we did before say quarter inch head space and then you’re going to process in a water bath caner or a steam caner for 15 minutes now the recipe says 10 minutes but I’ve always used 15 minutes for cranberry sauce and

All the recipes that I saw cuz that one kind of caught me off guard I looked up several other and they all have 15 minutes so that’s what I choose to do recipe says 10 you know pick what makes you feel really good about it but with

Something like this I find no difference in consistency taste anything in 10 to 15 minutes so if 15 minutes is the tried and true method I’m going to take 15 minutes so that’s what I did so I want to pop in here with one note this video

Is poed on December 9th 2023 if you’re you’re watching this the day it comes out or maybe the day after don’t forget that the special promotion 30% off n knives runs through December 10th if you use my code or my link I’ll put those down below you know that they’ve given

Me several knives to try I have loved them so much that I bought my own knives during this sale so I just bought them a couple days ago so I don’t have them here yet but I bought the set of three pairing knives I’ll put the link to that

Down below I am so excited to get them and you’ll see them in a future video but but I did want to remind you that you only have until December 10th for that 30% off discount to be in effect so don’t forget to use my code and thank

You welcome back to cranberries all right let’s move on to the dried cranberries I’m going to bring you down here and take a look and give you my initial thoughts about these and then we’ll go through how I made each of the recipes all right both of these recipes

Are from websites that I go to often the authors of these are women for whom I have bought their cookbooks I do a lot of their recipes they’re fantastic so in my opinion they’re both good neither one is perfect so let me kind of give you my thoughts about this one this

One is from wholesome yum so I will link this recipe down below Maya Kamp is her name wholesome yum these worked out some of them worked out fine and some of them had a you know they’re kind of stuck together a bit most of them are pretty decent shape

This one’s going to be crunchy let me I’ll try this see if you can hear it that’s a crunchy cranberry not really what I’m thinking when I want my cranberries dried but I think that there’s probably a fix for that so we’ll talk about that in a

Minute you can see both of these recipes use oil you I hope you can see maybe the oil on my hands this one uses 1 tblspoon of avocado oil this one is done a different way and it uses 2 tablespoons of avocado oil so I think that the consistency on these is

Good however they are messy well that one was a little bit crunchy but most of these have a pretty decent consistency chewy like you would want a dried cranberry to be but the oil on these is pretty intense and when I pulled these out to kind of dry you can see that

There’s a lot of oil left in my paper towel several of them stuck to the paper towel because it was so sticky and even worse or crazier this is the pan that they came off of that’s a lot of oil it was very little oil residue on the other one so I think

Somewhere between this one and this one on oil is the right way to go and I think that there’s an extra step we can take in here to make sure that we get a better consistency where everything is a is chewy rather than crunchy see most of these are

Chewy and most of these are a bit crunchy let’s see if I can find a chewy one no no that one was even crunchy okay so I have some ideas on this I’m going to walk you through how I did each one of these and we’re going to

Do some combination of the two to come up with something I think is going to be better so let’s talk about Maya’s first this is from wholesome yum again fantastic love her love her recipes love her cookbooks everything that I’ve had from her has actually been quite good so let’s talk about this

One all right so she used 12 oun of cranberries she says fresh or frozen and thawed I use fresh ones and then she uses something called bestie powdered monk fruit aulos blend I just use my regular aulos she uses a half cup and she used one tablespoon of avocado oil

So she did this in the oven in fact both of these recipes were dried in the oven and I chose to do it that way because not everybody has a dehydrator and it kind of promised me that I was looking at more like three maybe 4 hours to dry these rather than

You know 12 to 16 in a dehydrator well you know I don’t know that was a little misleading it actually took about 12 hours for each of these it may have been my oven that caused the problem but these took me just as long as they would

Have taken in a dehydrator so feel free to do it at a dehydrator if you would like but her directions say to preheat the oven to 225 bring a pot of water to a gentle boil remove from heat and then add the Cranberries it says do not boil them set

Aside for 10 minutes they will soften and start to pop well I had to do that three times literally I had to take the pot of cranberries back to the stove three times heat it up I didn’t let it come to a boil cuz she was very specific

About that but I did kind of let it simmer just a little bit and it took three times doing that to get the Cranberries to pop next step is to drain the water from the Cranberries as soon as they have popped and transfer to a large bowl that’s where you add your avocado

Oil now remember this is one tblspoon of avocado oil in this one and I just took a spoon as you can see and and mixed it up felt like I was coating everything reasonably well and then you add the iOS and mix that up so took a solid 12 hours I just

Left it on overnight I did take it down to 175 when I went to bed just to be sure I didn’t you know really kill anything in there but I don’t know you have all of this and maybe that’s because I popped them too much you know maybe with the three

Tries but I just wanted them to pop at all and literally they were not popping they were just not popping on their own so I kept taking them back to the stove so some of that may be my earr but that’s what we have there so these

Are not as not as sticky they are sticky but they’re not as sticky and they’re not as oily as these all right let’s talk about the next version then this is Carolyn ketchum’s version and she is all day I dream about food she’s cute adorable great cookbook

I love many of her recipes so this one this one I’m actually going to tell you the look of The Cranberries the feel of The Cranberries The Chew of The Cranberries this one is my favorite however I think there’s way too much oil on these so let me walk you through what

The instructions say and how I did these and then I’ll give you a couple of ideas on how we might make these a little less oily yet still have good results she uses 12 oz of fresh cranberries 1/3 of a cup of swerve confectioners now I don’t use swerve

Confectioners again I used allulose the brand of allulose I use is very very fine just like a confectioner sugar there are some brands that are not as fine so you may want to stick those in a blender whip it up she also used one cup of AO powdered

Version again mine suited just fine as a powdered version so I just used in total 2/3 of a cup of a Lo and then she used 2 tspoons of avocado oil so her instructions say to preheat the oven to 200 there’s no cooking of The Cranberries beforehand there’s no

Waiting for them to Pop there’s none of that so it says cut them in half and toss in a bowl with the sweeteners and the oil you know it takes a while or at least it took me a while to chop these but I think for the product that you get

I would probably choose to do that again over messing around with trying to get them to pop just the right amount she says to place it in the oven and let it dry for 3 hours or longer and you know as I mentioned that or longer part was

Was really quite key so she says to store these in the refrigerator in an airtight container some of you will feel fine just leaving them in the pantry and while I would like my dried cranberries to be shelf stable I’m probably going to stick them in the refrigerator so the

Oil was the part that was really bothering me about all of this so I wanted to try to find a way to not use the oil and I thought well you know when I make my homemade granola I use a liquid iose it’s kind of syrupy like it kind of I

Don’t know it just kind of holds it all together I put it in the dehydrator comes out great so I thought well let me try that well well no no don’t even don’t even think about trying that because the part about the it works like glue to hold my granola

Together was the part that I just kind of skipped over so yes it turned to [Applause] glue this is what you come up with with the liquid eyos I don’t know if you can see it from this far away but it is it is literally kind of glued to that sheet

So that was that was a singularly bad idea I spent a good amount of time laughing at myself over that one so I thought you might enjoy the laugh as well so the question is will I do this again yes absolutely I would do this one again with the modification of reducing

The oil and instead of just tossing them with a spoon I would get in there and massage with my hand try to get that oil in all the crevices because once you cut a cranberry in half there are a lot of crevices you know not like a pomegranate

But same kind of theory right lots of crevices where you need to get the oil to make sure that it comes out soft and pl B and chewy cuz that’s what we want we don’t want hard and crunchy so I would do this one again start with a

Tablespoon of avocado oil maybe try tablespoon and a/ quarter tablespoon and a half if you have to but two tablespoons is really I I think I think that’s really Overkill so that’s my thoughts for today I hope you enjoyed it and I hope if you are keto you’re low

Carb you’re diabetic you’re watching your sugar you’re counting calories whatever it is I hope that this allows you to enjoy some cranberries during this season so thank you so much for being here and I’ll see you next week bye-bye