How to Make Cranberry Sauce
It's almost impossible to think of a Thanksgiving feast without cranberry sauce. The turkey, potatoes, gravy and all the other side dishes are important, but cranberry sauce is the finishing touch. Sure, the kind from a can will do in a pinch, but homemade is far better, and you don't have to be an expert chef to learn how to make cranberry sauce from scratch.Did you know that cranberries have been crowned one of the new "super foods?" Scientists and nutritionists keep finding new health benefits connected to this tiny fruit. Research suggests that cranberries may fight urinary infections, reduce plaque on teeth, kill some strains of bacteria and may even prevent certain types of cancer. But most of us eat cranberries because we love the way they taste.
Transcript
Hi, it's Miranda with recipe.com, and today we're gonna make
fresh cranberry sauce. Now adding in oranges, pecans, and apples
make this traditional holiday dish something a little bit special.
So, we have that all of our ingredients laid out
here. Let's get started. We have 2 cups of cranberries.
You can use either fresh or frozen;
1 Granny Smith apple which has been peeled, cored, and
quartered; 1 navel orange with half of the peel zested,
which I have here right to the side; 1/2 cup
of sugar; 1/4 cup of finely chopped pecans. You can
also add in 1 ounce of brandy if you wanted
to make this alcoholic. I've omitted it, but I can
certainly include, and then 1 pinch of olive spice. I
have a food processor over here. What we're going to
start by doing is putting in our beautiful cranberries.
Look how gorgeous those are, oops, with a few drops,
that's okay, already looks like the holidays on these beautiful
cranberries and then we're gonna add in the apples and
just combine this until they're kind of like coarsely chopped.
So, just pulse away until coarsely chopped. Now, if you
notice that your apples really are not getting in the
action,
you can move cranberries just kind of aside and make
sure it really gets in there sticking right next to
the blade. The cranberries are looking lovely, alright keep it
going. Okay, this looks great. Look how beautiful this is.
Just pop this into medium size bowl and although totally
gorgeous, looks right, it's not quite ready for eating. We
still have few more steps to go. Alright, just pour
this
into the bowl, great, and just set this aside. So,
next step, we're moving onto orange now. As I mentioned,
we are to use just the half of this. We're
just gonna peel the remaining half, and just pull out
this in there of a middle heck here.
Okay, so we're just gonna discard the peel, and we're
just going to just squeeze the juice into this bowl
and if any seeds pop in, you're gonna, you know,
fish those out, but so far, looking so good, just
squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, discard. Alright, so we've got some great
delicious juice here.
We can move on to popping that in here, pecans,
that zest. It's gonna give it sup of powerful citrus
flavor, that delicious all spice, and of course the sweet,
the sweet sugar. Now, this is different from, you know,
many cranberry sauce recipes because you may have notice that
we didn't cook this and this is just going to
sit in the refrigerator overnight,
and it will be ready to serve the next morning.
You want to give it at least 8 hours. This
is a dish that you wanna serve chilled and look
at that. How simple, a little twist and something old,
and definitely gonna be a new favorite. That's you make
Fresh Cranberry Sauce
What You'll Need
- 2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
- 1 large granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and quartered
- 1 navel orange, half of peel zested
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
- 1 oz brandy (optional)
- 1 pinch allspice
Step By Step
1
In a food processor, pulse together cranberries and apple until coarsely chopped; transfer to a medium bowl. Peel orange and separate into segments, removing membrane. Coarsely chop segments and squeeze juice from membrane (discard membrane). Add orange, juice, zest, sugar, nuts, brandy (if using) and allspice to cranberry-apple mixture; stir until combined. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve chilled. Makes 12 to 14 servings.
With zero saturated fat, zero cholesterol, a mere 66 calories per serving, yet packed with antioxidants, this fresh-tasting cranberry sauce is good enough to spread on toast in the morning or spread on crackers as a mid-night snack.
You can serve cranberry sauce with chicken, pork fish and of course turkey, but did you know you can add cranberry sauce to steamed vegetables to give zing and zest without fat and sugar? Add a spoonful or two of cranberry sauce to vegetables and turn plain veggies into something special. Or mix it into muffins, cookies or breads. Glaze barbecued vegetables or meats with cranberry sauce for a glossy shine or mix it into barbecue sauce for a tangy punch of flavor.
Thin cranberry sauce with olive oil and a bit of vinegar for a flavorful salad dressing or to use as a marinade for meats or vegetables.
Create an instant hors d'oeuvre by unwrapping a block of cream cheese and liberally spreading cranberry sauce over the top. Serve with crackers or crostini. Or buy or make puff pastry cups to which you add a dollop of brie or gorgonzola cheese topped with a tablespoon of cranberry sauce. Bake and serve.
Now that you know how easy it is to make cranberry sauce, there's no reason to keep this healthy food as a holiday-only recipe -- it's the perfect sweet-tart condiment to chicken, pork, duck, and even hearty fishes.
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