Easiest Cranberry Sauce (and Even Better Sauce!)
It’s the easiest thing to open up a can of cranberry sauce (or even the cranberry jelly that retains the shape of the can), and there’s nothing wrong with that. But with only a few minutes you can make a delicious cranberry sauce at home. And with a few minutes more, and some orange peel, you can make it over-the-top delicious.
Bonus: you can make this a several days in advance, stick it in the fridge, and just dish it up on Thanksgiving.
Easy Cranberry Sauce
1 12-oz bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
Put the water and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve all the sugar.
Add the cranberries and bring it back to a boil. Turn the heat down so it’s simmering nicely and let it go for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
The cranberries will burst as the sauce thickens. If you want, you can squish them against the pan with a spatula, or leave some of them whole. You might also notice some of the skins will pop off, leaving a whitish berry — that’s okay, too.
After about 10 minutes, you’ll have a nice thick sauce. Take it off the heat, let it cool, put it in a lidded container and put it in the fridge until you’re ready to serve it.
Scroll down for a small tweak that will make a huge difference.
Once the sugar water comes to a boil, add the cranberries and return to a simmer.
This only takes about 10 minutes.
Orange peels!
If you want to take it to the next level, peel an orange and put the peels in with the cranberries. We use a vegetable peeler to just get the peel and not the bitter white pith, and also because it makes big chunks that we can easily removed when it’s done cooking.
No, it won’t taste like orange, not really at all. But orange and cranberries just work, and the result is suprisingly impressive.