We will kick off the holiday recipe sharing with the easiest of the easy – cranberry sauce! This is my personal favourite of the leftovers of Christmas and Thanksgiving meals, especially since I have started making it fresh!
When cooking for the holidays, there is certainly an order that things get done. If you are anything like me, you’ve had that order written out on a piece of paper for the three days leading up to the cooking of this meal. If not, let me help you start: cranberry sauce should be the first thing that you make in that hectic morning of massive meal prep.
It is truly SO simple. There are but three ingredients in cranberry sauce: fresh cranberries, light brown sugar, and orange juice. You can add orange zest if you want to be even more fancy, you can squeeze your own orange juice in the morning and have a glass (with some champagne in it) while you start to cook, but to keep it really easy, stick with these three things.
Fresh cranberries are generally sold in packs of 250g, and frozen seem to generally be sold in 400g packs. You can use either, and modify the other two ingredients to match. For 250g of cranberries, you need 100mL of orange juice and 100g of light brown sugar. Simple as!
Measure your ingredients out, get the mise en place sorted, and hurrah! Tip the orange juice and sugar into a pot, stir until combined and bring to the boil. Once boiling, add in your cranberries, stir until they are coated and bring down to a simmer until the cranberries start to burst. You will hear the funny noise they make as they get hot. You want them to be very tender, but still holding their shape. I usually mash a few with the spoon and keep the majority as full berries, but it is to your personal taste! In any case, as this cools it will gelatinise and thicken. Remove from the heat, stir in the optional orange zest, and move to a glass bowl to cool.
And voilà, that is it, you’ve made cranberry sauce! Cover, and pop it into the fridge once the bowl has cooled to room temperature, or just keep it on the table until dinner is served. You will wow your holiday guests (or flatmates or family or whomever you are celebrating with) by serving fresh – not jarred or tinned sauce that only took you TEN MINUTES and THREE INGREDIENTS to make !
Cranberry Sauce
Ingredients
- 250g cranberries (frozen or fresh)
- 100mL orange juice (homemade or storebought)
- 100g brown sugar
- optional: orange zest
Directions
- Measure out all of the ingredients
- In a medium saucepan, add orange juice and brown sugar, stir and bring to the boil.
- Add in cranberries once boiling, reduce heat to simmer, cook until cranberries begin to burst and are tender but still hold their shape, about 10 minutes. Optional: mash some berries with the side of the spoon, stir to mix.
- Remove from heat and pour sauce into a glass bowl. Let cool, and while cooling watch as the sauce becomes thicker. Optional: add orange zest just after removing from heat.
- Serve and wow!
Sans Estomac 