Apple & Cranberry Sauce with Orange & Crystallized Ginger Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the two types of cranberry sauce? ›

Cranberry sauce can be served either as a gooey liquid or as a solid jelly. The jellied version is solid enough to retain the shape of the container in which it's placed whereas the sauce version is much more fluid. The difference between the fluid sauce and the jelly versions comes down to pectin.

Adding a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon or orange zest, a tablespoon of chopped candied peel, or even a splash of juice to your canned sauce will brighten flavors and bring in some homemade flavor.

Sugar helps the thickening process, and while it's nice to try to keep your cranberry sauce from being too sugary sweet, you will need at least some sugar to make it work well (about 1/2 cup sugar per 12-ounce bag of cranberries).

The traditional cranberry sauce, made with sugar, did not become popularized until the 19th century. By the early 20th century, farmers began harvesting cranberries in bogs instead of dry-harvesting, which led to cranberry sauce as a Thanksgiving staple.

The major variation you're likely to come across is "whole berry" versus "jellied." The only difference between them is that the jellied sauce is cooked until the berries have completely broken down. They both slide out of the can as a wobbly red cylinder.

Nutritional Facts Face-Off

We can see there is a significant difference in the nutrition facts between the two sauces. The homemade cranberry sauce has nearly half the calories, carbohydrates, and sugars compared to the store brand. It also has more fiber as well as potassium!

The citrus-herb combination of orange and thyme is a great way to liven up a wide range of savory dishes. For our cranberry sauce upgrade, combine orange zest and thyme leaves on a cutting board, coarsely chop, and then sprinkle on slices as a colorful, flavor-boosting garnish.

Directions. In a saucepan, combine cranberries, sugar, orange zest and juice, cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until cranberries burst and mixture thickens slightly, 12 to 15 minutes. (Sauce will thicken more as it cools.)

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.

Why is my homemade cranberry sauce runny? ›

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. Another possibility is that the cranberries need to boil for longer, releasing their pectin and ensuring a jelly consistency.

Reduce heat to a low boil and cook for 10 minutes, until the berries have all burst. Remove from heat. Serve warm, room temperature, or chilled. Cranberry sauce will thicken as it cools.

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.”

But that's not the case for prepared cranberry sauces, where prices are up. Lochner pointed out that processors set those prices, not growers, and that there are higher input costs unrelated to berries — like “processing the fruit and getting it to market.”

Cranberry sauce was first offered to consumers in North America in 1912 in Hanson, Massachusetts. Canned cranberry sauce appeared on the market in 1941, allowing the product to be sold year-round. Cranberry sauce can be used with a variety of meats, including turkey, pork, chicken, and ham.

There are four major varieties of cranberries: American, European, Mountain and Highbush, with American being the most common variety used for juice and sold as fresh berries. Highbush is mostly used for jelly, jams and sauces. Most cranberries are picked by machines, however, machines damage the berries.

Types & Varieties of Cranberries

There are more than 100 cranberry varieties including Alfredo Compact, Baily Compact, Ben Lear, Bergman, Compactum, Crowley, Early Black, Howes, McFarlin, Pilgrim, Redwing, Searles, Stevens, and Wentworth.

In fact, they're most often consumed as juice, which is normally sweetened and blended with other fruit juices. Other cranberry-based products include sauces, dried cranberries, and powders and extracts used in supplements.

Typically, "cranberry sauce" refers to a cooked product while "cranberry relish" is uncooked (the cranberries instead are broken down in a food processor or other manner)—however, some recipes use these phrases interchangeably.