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Thanksgiving in the US brings about staple holiday dishes that pretty much everyone serves at their family dinner, and one of those most popular traditions, is cranberry sauce! This slightly sweet and tart, jam-like condiment, is used by most Americans to slather on their turkey, dinner rolls, and more. What once used to be a fresh and easy homemade dish served at the family holiday dinner table, now is more often than not from a can instead.
Canned cranberry sauce can contain icky ingredients
Not only does Ocean Spray's canned cranberry sauce contain Bisphenol A (Other wise known as BPA), which is a known carcinogen that has been proven to cause birth defects, cancers, and neurological disorders, but their cranberry sauce also contains a bunch of artificial ingredients including my ADHD family's least favorite sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup. Their canned cranberry sauce is a gelatinous mess of toxic ingredients that we are trying to avoid in our food here in the Hippy household! This is one of the reasons I began homemaking my cranberry sauce. The other reason is that it tastes SO MUCH BETTER!!! Before I began making my own cranberry sauce, I never liked cranberry sauce. Every year, I would see it at the table, but none of us would go to eat it because we all found it's flavor to be lacking. I was totally surprised by how delicious real homemade cranberry sauce is, with whole food ingredients!
Use your Blendtec blender to get a smooth consistency
Let's be real here for a second. I don't like my cranberry sauce to be chunky. I always like to blend mine to get a creamier jam like consistency instead! I recently received a Blendtec Designer 725 with the Twister jar. This high-powered blender can do just about anything, including make whipped cream and a smooth cranberry sauce! I simply poured my cranberry sauce into my wildside jar and pulsed it a few times until my cranberry sauce was to the consistency that I like.
Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce
This sauce is sooooo good, you will be spreading it on toast, turkey, and more until it's gone! I even like to use the leftovers in my pumpkin cinnamon rolls (just wait, that recipe is coming soon!). You can freeze this jam if you want to make big batches and defrost in your fridge a day before use.
INGREDIENTS
- 8 oz. cranberries, fresh or frozen (about 2 1/2 cups)
- 1/2 cup maple syrup, plus extra to taste (or raw unfiltered honey)
- 1/4 cup orange juice, fresh squeezed (about 1 orange)
- 1 Tbsp. orange zest (about 1 orange)
- 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. fresh ginger, finely minced or grated (or 1/4 tsp. ground ginger)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
DIRECTIONS
- In a medium saucepan, combine cranberries, maple syrup, orange juice, zest, cinnamon, ginger, and salt.
- Bring to a boil then rude heat to a simmer.
- Cook about 15 minutes, stirring frequently. You can tell the cranberries are done, once they start to pop and turn to sauce.
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract and more maple syrup to taste! (I don't normally need more, but everyone's tastes are different!)
- If you are like me and don't like a chunky cranberry sauce, pour the hot mixture into your blender (I like to use the Blendtec Designer 725) and pulse a few times until you get the consistency you like!
