Amazing Cranberry Sauce Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

How to enhance cranberry sauce? ›

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.

"Instead, start by stirring in one tablespoon maple syrup and one teaspoon of a sweet drink like apple juice, orange juice, or fruity white or red wine. Add more to taste. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt (in small amounts, it intensifies sweetness)."

Jelling. Homemade cranberry sauce is meant to thicken, or “jell,” while cooking. If it stays soupy, that could mean a couple of things. 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.

Add A Splash Of Vinegar

Their sharp tang counteracts bitter flavors without having to add extra sugar. While citrus is a natural pairing for cranberry sauce, bright, savory vinegars like sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and apple cider vinegar play well with the bitter-tart berries.

I sweetened my juice with honey which adds a sweet floral touch to the beverage. I also use a couple of freshly squeezed oranges which gives the juice a nice hint of citrus flavor. I'm sure apple juice or apple cider would work well too.

Originally Answered: How can I make cranberry juice taste better? Personally, I recommend doing what Ocean Spray does, and mixing in other juices. Grape and apple seem to work well. For a little kick, add Sprite or Sierra Mist instead.

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.”

Cranberry sauce is supposed to be a balance of sweet and tart. The sauce acts as a cleansing port in a tumultuous storm of fat and salt, but the effect is lost if the sauce is too sweet. Luckily, there is a very easy way to fix an over-sugared homemade sauce: You just need a little citric acid.

The sauce will thicken as it cools. If you want a cranberry mold that holds its shape, continue to boil the mixture so that more pectin is released from the fruit, additional water evaporates, and the sauce becomes thick enough to set into a firm gel.

What to do if the cranberry sauce is too thin or loose. 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.

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.

Typically served chilled, our recipe can be made up to 3 days ahead.

How Do You Neutralize Sour Taste in Food? If a dish is too sour, add a little bit of sugar! Sweetness balances out sour flavors, so if something makes your mouth pucker, a dash of sugar may help soften the blow of the sour food.

That said, the best way to tackle fruits that are way too tart is to balance their sourness with sweetness. In addition to softening their abrasiveness, tossing any unbearably bitter berries with sugar can also heighten nuanced flavors.

Cranberries are just about always sweetened. In their natural state, they are extremely tart. They're safe unsweetened, just not pleasant.

Mix with cream cheese for a tasty topping on crackers and bagels! Dollop a spoonful on baked sweet potato in place of butter. Top off your yoghurt with a spoonful for extra fruity flavour! Swirl it into your cake batter for delicious marbled muffins.

Instead, the pectin polymers will bind to each other, giving the cranberry mixture more and more structure. The sweet sugar-water molecules get trapped in between the pectin chains, resulting in a tasty cranberry sauce!

Slight edge to homemade. Ocean Spray's sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, whereas homemade uses cane sugar. I spent an hour making the homemade cranberry sauce. Prep for the store-bought one, for those unfamiliar, goes: open can, pour onto serving plate, eat.

Health Benefits

Cranberries are also rich in vitamin C and fiber, as well as the metabolism-boosting mineral manganese. And yes, you reap all these benefits whether the cranberry sauce on your holiday table is homemade or canned, jellied or whole-berry.