I love everything about Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey, the mashed potatoes, the butternut squash… just writing about it makes my mouth water and my belly growl. There are so many side dishes that are popular with the traditional turkey dinner, and cranberry sauce is one of them. Personally I grew up on the good old fashion canned cranberry sauce, and I never even thought about making it myself until a few years ago. But now that I’ve had it homemade, I just can’t go back to the can. Not only do I look at the ingredients on the can and cringe, but the taste just isn’t the same.
I think I’ll always be the type that prefers a homemade meal over a processed packaged one. One of the reasons being that I like having control over my ingredients. There’s a lot to be said for knowing exactly what’s in the food you’re eating opposed to looking at the ingredients on a package and not even knowing what everything is on the label. Yikes!
For the past few years I’ve been making my own cranberry sauce, not just for Thanksgiving, but for hearty meals such as chicken pot pie or beef stew. And I have to admit that each and every time I make it a little bit differently. Today while being home with my sick toddler, I decided that I’d whip up a batch of cranberry sauce to go with dinner. But this time, I definitely switched it up a bit from what you’d see in a typical recipe. And I already know it tastes absolutely delicious because I tried a little bit before sticking it in the fridge to set.
- 6 oranges, peeled
- 1 green apple
- 1 package of freshcranberries, rinsed and strained
- 1 cup of honey
- ground cinnamon
- ground clove
- ground nutmeg
- ground ginger
- ginger root
- orange zest
- In a juicer, juicer your oranges and green apple
- In a saucepan add your cranberries and 2 cups of your juice
- Boil until the cranberries start to snap, crackle and pop
- Add honey while stirring all ingredients
- Add spices to your liking - I never measure, I just go by taste
- Add orange and ginger root zest
- Continue to stir and let simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
- You can either keep the cranberry sauce whole, or as I like to say, chunky, or you can use an immersion blender to smooth it out.
- Pour your cranberry sauce into a 9 inch baking dish and refrigerate for four hours or until set and firm.
- If you don't have a juicer you can certainly use store bought orange and apple juice. Do 1 1/2 cups of OJ and a 1/2 cup of apple juice.