You can give cranberry sauce a spicy kick, a tart edge, or a touch of sweetness with simple, affordable products: sugar, honey, chili pepper. The berry itself is sour, so on that front everything is simple too: for a tart sauce you'll need only the berries, water, salt, and spices to taste.
The five most commonly used ingredients in cranberry sauce recipes:
| Product | Calories per 100g | Protein g per 100g | Fats g per 100g | Carbohydrates g per 100g |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cranberries | 26 | 0.5 | 0 | 6.8 |
| Sugar | 398 | 0 | 0 | 99.7 |
| Orange peel | 97 | 1.5 | 0.2 | 14.4 |
| Orange juice | 36 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 8.1 |
| Potato starch | 300 | 1 | 0 | 79.6 |
To keep the most beneficial nutrients in the dish, it's better to make the sauce and serve it right away, without heat-treating it. At most, store it in the refrigerator for no more than a few days. If you need to put it up for the winter, then you'll have to decide what works best. The best storage is in the refrigerator. If it's for a cellar, cooking it down is preferable.
This is an ideal sauce to put up, and it's meant mainly for poultry dishes. Mix the cranberries with sugar and boil them in a heavy-bottomed pot until the berries burst. Add grated lemon and orange zest. Next, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Cook it all for about five minutes. Pour in the lemon and orange juice (freshly squeezed) and cook for about three minutes. Remove from the heat and pour into bottles or jars for later storage.
In general, depending on your taste preferences and the dish the cranberry sauce is served with, its recipes can be as varied as there are spices and seasonings in the world. Cranberries can be mixed with other berries: black currants, lingonberries. You can add vegetables: onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper. Leave the berries partly whole or press them into a puree (the skins break down on their own during cooking). You can keep it thick or thin it out.
The five fastest homemade cranberry sauce recipes:
| Dish Name | Cooking time | Calories per 100g | User Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cranberry sauce for meat dishes | 10 min | 122 | +100 |
| Cranberry sauce for meat | 10 min | 54 | +76 |
| Simple cranberry sauce | 15 min | 138 | +28 |
| The simplest sweet-and-sour cranberry sauce | 20 min | 122 | +66 |
| Cranberry sauce with ginger and cinnamon | 20 min | 98 | +29 |
It's worth mentioning that cranberry sauce is good not only as a condiment for dishes. It will help support the immune system in the winter season — after all, cranberries are one of the strongest antioxidants.