Time for a camera clean-out. This should have gone up a long time ago but now that I think about it, there is value to holiday cooking postmortems since many Christmas dinners look a lot like Thanksgiving dinners. I saw lots of discussions on turkey, stuffing, various side dishes, and pies this year but not a lot on cranberry sauce (or gravy!).
Just because I didn’t cook on Thanksgiving doesn’t mean that I didn’t make cranberry sauce this year. I did. And, like pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce is another staple of the holiday table I’m not all that fond of. Oh, I like the taste, I just don’t really like it with turkey. Perhaps its just the fact that when the holiday plate is full, a heaping serving of sugary fruit is not what I need just then? Nonetheless, I still make it each year. My dear husband enjoys its tangy goodness as an ice cream topping and I like it on roasted chicken. The recipe makes a bunch so I end up canning it in 1/2 pint jars to use all winter during roast season since the packaged fresh cranberries aren’t all that available after the holiday rush is over.
Like my gravy, there isn’t much special to the recipe. I use the one on the package but its souped up with orange:
Cranberry Sauce:
2 packages fresh cranberries
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
1 cup fresh orange juice
grated orange zest of one orange
Grand Marnier to taste
Combine water, orange juice and sugar in saucepan and bring to boil. Add cranberries and simmer, stirring occassionaly for 10 minutes until berries burst and its gets ‘saucy’. remove from heat and add orange zest and Grand Marnier to taste. 2 TBS for my taste.
Mixture can keep for 2-3 days in the refrigerator and 6 months if canned using the water bath method. (Maybe longer but mine will get used up l0ng before 6 months.)
