November 24th, 2009

cap, captain miss america

Thanksgiving Tip of the Day: Perfect Cranberry Sauce #2

So, yesterday I posted about how to make perfect cooked cranberry sauce

I left out an important tip though! Kalynn pointed out to me that I didn’t remind you all to wash and pick through your cranberries for bad ones!

When you open a bag of cranberries, put them in a colander and rinse them under cold water. pick through them carefully with your hand to remove any rotten ones. How do you tell a good cranberry from a rotten one?

This is a good cranberry:


Note that it is bright to dark red in color (they can be pink and good, too– there is a lot of color variation, but a good cranberry will be somewhere between pink and dark maroon). It is also VERY firm to the touch, like an apple.

This is a bad cranberry:


See how it is turning brownish? That’s the first clue that a cranberry is bad. Another clue is how it is all wrinkly. Bad cranberries will be slightly mushy– sort of like a bad grape. It is also slightly translucent instead of very opaque, and the skin is less shiny.

Get rid of the bad cranberries and keep the good ones!

Now, I’m going to show you a second way to make cranberry sauce. This one is quicker and easier than the one we did yesterday, but requires a food processor! This will make a more tart cranberry relish that is really good as a sandwich spread.

Take a bag of cranberries and put them in the food processor. You can also add fresh herbs– I put basil in mine this year, but mint or parsley is also really good. Then just process them until they are finely chopped but not mushy– sort of the size of chopped nuts that you’d get on a sundae at an ice cream parlor.

When it’s done, it should look like this:


This will be VERY tart and sour, and you more likely want to do something to sweeten it up a bit. There are two ways to sweeten it.

1) The dry way: add sugar in the food processor before you chop the berries. Add anywhere between a 1/4 cup and a cup of sugar per bag of berries. This is super simple and it will get mixed in when you chop!

2) The wet way: add a liquid sweetener after you chop the berries. You can use maple syrup, honey, homemade sugar syrup, molasses, or, my personal favorite, pomegranate molasses. You’ll want 3-5 tablespoons per bag of chopped cranberries. Just mix it in with a wooden spoon or your (washed, you slob!) hands.

Here is the sauce I made this year:
1/2 cup dry red wine (I used Cline Zinfandel 2007)
1/4 cup white sugar
3 Tbs pomegranate molasses. (If you can’t find pomegranate molasses, add 2 Tbs pomegranate juice)

Put all of these ingredients in a small saucepan and boil. Once the liquid reaches boiling, turn to low heat and simmer until it reaches the consistency of maple syrup. Let cool COMPLETELY before adding to chopped berries!

You can also add yummy things like nuts, pomegranate seeds, dried fruit, candied lemon, orange, or grapefruit peel, or pumpkin or sunflower seeds to the chopped berries for a little variation in texture!

Mirrored from