Learn how to make basic homemade cranberry sauce with just 3 ingredients as well as 8 different flavor variations. There’s sure to be one you love!
Today on the Stay at Home Chef, I’m showing you how to make basic threeingredient cranberry sauce, plus variations. The first thing you’ll need is 12 oz of fresh cranberries. You’ll want to place them into a colander. Then you’ll want to rinse your cranberries underneath cool water and then sort through them and feel for any soft or squishy cranberries like this one and toss those out. Then we’ll place the cranberries into a saucepan for which you have a tight fitting lid. But of course, you don’t actually need your lid quite yet. Then you’re going to pour in one cup of sugar. And if you want to do a variation on this, you could replace it with all brown sugar or do half and half brown sugar and white sugar. And then pour in half a cup of water. We’ll pop our lid on and then get this heating over medium heat. Now you can pop the lid off and give this a stir, but you’ll want to keep that lid on because after a few minutes, the cranberries are going to start to pop. If we take a quick peek inside, you’ll see it’s come to a simmer. You want to keep simmering just like this until the cranberries pop. I don’t know if you can hear that popping, but it’s there. So, we’ll go ahead and turn off the heat. And then you can use an immersion blender or a regular blender to blend this up. And you can either get it totally smooth or leave chunks if that’s what you like. You can serve cranberry sauce up warm, which is actually how I prefer it, or you can transfer this to a bowl and put it in the fridge and serve your sauce chilled. Now, I have eight different variations to share with you on my website, and all of them are delicious and fun. It’s basically all about switching up the liquids and any spices you might add in. All of the variations start out the same. You’ll need 12 oz of rinsed cranberries into a saucepan. And then you can swap out the water with different liquids. Orange juice is a super popular option, as well as apple juice and even red wine. Pour that in. And then for our sugar options on this one, I’m going to use half white sugar and half a cup of brown sugar. Mix this in. Last, you can experiment with different flavor additions. You can go traditional with ground ginger or like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Or you can add a little kick to things with jalapenos or even a chipotle pepper. I’m going to go with half a teaspoon of ground ginger for this one. So, it’s like a cran ginger. Then, just like before, we’ll pop a lid on and bring it to a simmer over medium heat. Once they pop, we can puree. You can find the full instructions for all eight variations as well as the basic option on my
7 Comments
Yu don't have to keep a lid on
Can frozen cranberries work well?
I make an old family “cranberry relish” recipe from my great grannie. I have her old style hand crank meat grinder. I grind up a pound of ripe cranberries.
Then one orange with the skin on, and walnuts. I do this with the grinder clamped onto my picnic table outside because it’s very messy. That way I can easily hose everything down afterwards and I lay down on old shower curtain liner to try to contain it a bit. Put everything into one bowl, sometimes we add a little sugar to taste but not too much to none at all. (1/4-1/2 cup) Mix well and chill in fridge before serving. Cover well. This is made several days in advance. I don’t know why I love this so much, as a kid even. lol. 😂Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Remember you don’t have to cook a turkey. A whole fryer, fish, pork roast, enchiladas, BBQ, whatever your family likes.
Adding a good pinch of salt makes this sauce come alive, so tasty!!
Sugar free version
Your production value is top tier.
I love adding a tablespoon or two of seedless raspberry jam