Well, you certainly are sneaky - you're making your own cranberry sauce this year! Congratulations. Perhaps you are making the No-Frills version we suggested earlier, or maybe you're ready to get adventurous.
Let me explain something about cooking: being adventurous in the kitchen requires no talent. It requires guts and patience. Guts because you need to dare yourself to think out of the box and try things you wouldn't normally try, and patience because sometimes it won't work out.
Making a batch of cranberry sauce can get pretty interesting once you start toying with the ingredients. Instead of cooking the berries in water, try other liquids like wine, juice, or even a little bit of vinegar. And to add flavor, why not add citrus zest, candied nuts, fruits like pears, dried apricots, currants, crystallized ginger and spices and herbs like cardamom, rosemary, and cloves? As long as you don't use too many (keep it to three or less added ingredients), can imagine the different flavors working harmoniously, and you understand how to make the basic sauce (easy!), you won't mess up.
Here's the basic Frills formula:
Cranberry Sauce with Frills
makes 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 cups
12-oz bag fresh cranberries (about 3 cups)
Up to 1 cup liquid (see note below)
Up to 3/4 cup sugar or brown sugar (depending on your other ingredients, you may have to adjust)
Additional ingredients (see note below)
Bring liquid(s) and sugar to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved. Add cranberries and other ingredients, lower flame to a simmer, and continue stirring occasionally. Cook until most of the berries just pop, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if necessary (dissolved in 2x the amount of water and brought to a boil briefly.) Can be made ahead of time, cover and stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Liquids: Try Port, Marsala, orange juice, apple or cherry cider, a dash of vinegar, even a few spoonfuls of liquor like Grand Marnier)
Additional Ingredients:
Now go on, get wild in the kitchen. I dare you.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Years ago I enjoed a cranberry-orange-ginger relish with Turkey at a restaurant in Oregon. It was the best darn relish I've ever had in my life, I've been trying to recreate it ever since!
one of my friends turned me on to a FANTASTIC, sickly, sickly FANTASTIC horseradish cranberry sauce
you make it with prepared horseradish condiment, or if you're ambitious like, me, you make your own horseradish concotion, then blend together w/cranberries and an onion and then freeze it
the freezing mellows the pungency of the horseradish and make it just freaking DELICIOUS
you serve it barely out of the icebox, so there's still ice crystals in it
my recipe is at home, if anyone wants it, post here, and i'll pop it up when i get home tonight
mangia!
Oops. I jumped to "frills" on yesterday's LA No-frills cranberry post. Apolgies for the following duplication...
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I'd add some orange juice and orange zest. The recipe I have also uses star anise and allspice. Deeee-lish.
One of the real challenges of cooking a big meal is making it all come out at the same time (still marvel that Mom could put nine molten-hot dishes on the table with only four burners...) Luckily, the cranberry sauce is a do-ahead. Even more reason to make it yourself. And DEAR GOD it smells good when cooking.
Cooking cranberries is a really "visual" cooking experience... the recipe I have says "they're done cooking when most of the berries have popped." And damned if that ain't what happens! So cool.
And there is no color on earth quite as glorious as cooking/cooked fresh cranberries.
I use a similar recipe but with orange juice and some fresh ginger. I like the idea of adding star anise, though, and may try that this year. Way back I used leftover mulled wine as the liquid and it turned out pretty good, too (but this year I'll be at an AA-homeowner's place for T-Day so I guess that's out).
you can also go with heat - fantastic with turkey
I just cribbed this online:
1 pound of cranberries (not the 12 oz. bag)
2 fluid oz. lime juice (1/4 cup from 2 small limes)
6 fl. oz. orange juice
1/3 cup Marsala wine
1 cup (dry measure) and 6 Tbs. sugar (11 dry oz. total)
one dried chipolte chile and one jalepeno
makes a quart
LOVE ginger and cranberry tho