Episode 055 Cranberry Sauce

Intro: Hello, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes and holiday recipes that you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Ooh, you guys. Cuddle up. Let’s talk about the holidays a little bit. I’m super excited. So I’m recording just before Thanksgiving. So we’ve got all of the traditional holiday recipes on the top of our minds, and one that I absolutely love that is always a pop out for me are the cranberries. So it was just, to me, the cranberries, of course when I was little, I hated them. Like how disgusting were cranberries when you were little. But as an adult, it is such a flavor balancer for the holiday dinner. So everything is super rich. You know, you have potatoes and gravy and Turkey or ham and stuffing. Everything is so heavy. Then you put those tart, fresh, cold cranberries on your plate and it just balances everything out. It’s like the palate cleanser you can keep coming back to after you’re like, okay, I’ve eaten all the mashed potatoes. Okay, let me take a few bites of those cranberries. It’s cold, it’s refreshing. So good. 

So if you’ve never made cranberries before, of course there’s a few different options that you can go here. You can just buy jellied cranberries from the grocery store. It’s what you think of when you think of EW cranberries, the whole thing dumps out in one piece. You can still see the ribs of the can on it. You slice it into slices and for some people that is what cranberries are, and it’s traditional. It’s kind of funny. People love it. However, there’s another option in the canned variety. You can buy whole cranberry, cranberry sauce. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Of course, you can make cranberries with fresh cranberries, which is great. But if your grocery store is out of fresh cranberries and you need to make cranberry sauce, go to the canned aisle and grab a can of whole berry cranberry sauce. We love the Ocean Spray brand, but use whatever they have available at your store.

What this is going to be are basically whole cranberries. There’s still going to be pieces and whole round cranberries within the jellied cranberry sauce. The thing that this lacks is depth of flavor and multiple layers of texture. So you can take two cans of whole berry cranberry sauce from the grocery store and zhuzh it up and make it so incredibly delicious. So let’s just jump right into this recipe. 

Tips and Tricks: I don’t have a ton of tips around this recipe. It’s really just an easy way to have super delicious cranberry sauce at your holiday table. Here are the ingredients you need to make your canned cranberry sauce recipe. You need two 14 ounce cans of whole berry cranberry sauce, an eight ounce can of crushed pineapple in juice. You want to make sure that you buy the one in a hundred percent juice and not a crushed pineapple in syrup. Then you’ll need one navel orange, just a fresh orange, medium, or large size. You’ll need some ground cinnamon and then some ground clove. 

Canned Cranberry Sauce Recipe: All right, so what you’re going to do is you’re going to take a large saucepan and put it over low heat. You’re going to pour in the two whole berry cranberry sauce cans, the whole can of eight ounce crushed pineapple and juice, the zest of one full orange, then a quarter teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a really healthy pinch of ground clove. You just warm that together for about 10 minutes over low heat, and you want to give it a stir occasionally, and that’s it.

Susie Weinrich: Now the key here is, tasting for your preference. If you like your cranberry super sweet, you can absolutely add in a little brown sugar, a little white sugar. Give it a stir, let it melt in. Now, if you like your cranberries a little more tart like I do, then you can squeeze in just a little bit of lemon juice. Of course, taste as you go because once it’s in there, you can’t take it out. If you added too much lemon juice and now it’s a little too tart, sprinkle a little sugar in and it should balance out perfectly. 

You’ll remove this from the heat and let it cool for about 15 to 20 minutes. It’s up to your personal preference if you want to serve your cranberries warm, or if you want to make them ahead, you can make them up to three days ahead, pop them in the fridge, and then serve them cold. 

So during the holidays when you’re making all of those dishes, I highly recommend making your cranberries a couple days ahead so that you don’t even have to worry about it. It’s already done. If you have some cranberries left over after the holidays, try eating this cranberry sauce over vanilla ice cream. I’m telling you guys, it is such a delicious treat. I know the tradition is to put it on Turkey sandwiches, but just give it a try over vanilla ice cream and let me know what you think.

You can always connect with me in the comment section of the actual recipe on momsdinner.net. So if you have anything to say about it. That’s where you need to meet me. 

That does it for this episode of Let’s Make Dinner. Of course, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about right in the show notes so you can find them, make them, save them, pin them, whatever you need.

I would also love it if you would subscribe or follow in your preferred podcast player or tell a friend, a loved one, a family member about this show and about Mom’s Dinner recipes. I would absolutely love you for that. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your dinner time a little easier. Happy holidays, everyone.