Cranberry Sauce with Orange Juice
We all know that homemade cranberry sauce with orange juice is 1000% better than store bought cranberry sauce! And we also know cranberry sauce is considered a festive holiday classic, but in my opinion it deserves a place in your fridge all year long. The problem? Fresh cranberries are a seasonal item in the extreme. They enter groceries stores around Mid-October and disappear before Christmas.
Well, here’s a little tip from my kitchen to yours. Fresh cranberries freeze really well for over year! You heard me right. So, just wait until they go on sale and never buy full price again. Use the fresh ones for a bit and freeze what’s left until next holiday season. I buy about 5lbs (2.3kg) of fresh cranberries the day after U.S. Thanksgiving every year. Last year, I scored 12oz (340g) bags for $.50 a piece at my local supermarket! #winning!
So, how do you use this abundance of produce? I personally think this cranberry sauce is perfection on top of vanilla ice cream or cheesecake. And if that doesn’t do it for you, a few tweaks to the recipe’s ingredients or cooking technique gives you excellent results in cocktails and baked goods! (Want proof? Here you go! Cranberry-Ginger French 75 Cocktail and Cranberry and Orange Scones) You can also just throw some frozen cranberries into smoothies if you are tired of frozen strawberries all the time. They are such a versatile fruit.
Get the Recipe: Cranberry Sauce with Orange Juice
Ingredients
- 12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries
- 1 cup orange juice, fresh-squeezed , About 3-4 oranges
- 2/3 cup refined, granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup brown sugar, light or dark
- zest of 1 lemon
Equipment
- 1 strainer
- 1 citrus reamer or juicer (optional)
- measuring cups or kitchen scale
- 1 small pot
- 1 microplane or fine grater
- 1 spatula or spoon
- 1 blender
- 1 Fine Mesh Strainer
Instructions
- First, empty the bag of cranberries into a strainer in your sink and give them a toss and quick rinse. If you see any shriveled or hardened cranberries, pick them out. Leave the cranberries in the sink until needed.
- Next, slice the oranges in half and squeeze the fresh orange juice. Pour the orange juice into a small pot along with the sugars. Then, turn the stove to medium heat and swirl or stir until the sugar dissolves into the orange juice.
- When the sugar has fully dissolved add the rinsed cranberries into the pot. Let everything come to a boil for roughly 5-7 minutes or until the cranberries have popped and soaked into the syrup. Then, turn off the heat and zest the lemon directly into the pot.
- You can stop there for a rustic cranberry sauce, but I prefer to pour the sauce into a blender and blend everything together, on high, until the sauce lightens in color. For the silkiest possible texture, pour the resulting cranberry sauce through a fine mesh strainer.
- Set aside or place in a refrigerator to cool. Once happy with the temperature, serve.
Notes
- If you don’t want to squeeze oranges, you can substitute with apple cider, cranberry juice, or water for different variations in flavor, but still a delicious sauce. (see FAQs for more options)
- If you want a truly smooth cranberry sauce, straining is the only way to get that. Cranberry skins can be tough and act similarly to cooked pepper skin and tomato skin in sauces. While it’s common to peel peppers and tomatoes after they are cooked, peeling cranberries would be NUTS! So, blending and straining is the way to go.
Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions
NOPE. Whatever you can find that is ripe will do! I prefer Cara-Cara for their sweetness or navel for how juicy and orange-y in flavor they are. But you can use tangerines, satsumas, valencia oranges, etc. As long as you have the correct amount of fresh squeezed juice, you are good to go.
Yes, but take note, bottled oj is more acidic than fresh squeezed juice. To combat the tartness, I recommend going through the whole recipe up through blending. Then, add a little bit of liquid sweetener, like corn syrup, dextrose, agave, or golden syrup to the blender and re-mix until you are happy with the sweetness level.
Almost anything I suppose. It depends on what you are looking for, flavorwise with your cranberry sauce:
– To stay at the same sweetness level of fresh squeezed OJ and keep the flavor profile similar, I suggest using apple cider or apple juice as a subsitute.
– If you want to amp up the tartness a bit, use bottled OJ as described above, cranberry cocktail/juice, or even substitute a bit of the orange juice for a little bit of lime juice.
– If you want to go for a less sugar added option, simply use water.
– And, lastly, if you want to experiment with something different, try coconut water, pineapple juice, mango juice, peach nectar, carrot juice, and or grape juice. The sky is the limit here I think.
The sugar you use will affect the tartness and brightness of flavor in the final cranberry sauce. My recipe uses refined granulated sugar and brown sugar. The molasses in the brown sugar mellows the tartness of the cranberries and gives it a mulling spice feel without adding those spices.
If you prefer a sauce with brighter, stronger cranberry flavor, use all refined granulated sugar or unrefined granulated sugar. And if you want sauce with even more depth of flavor, use exclusively light or dark brown sugar.
Absolutely. The cranberry sauce can be made up to 2 weeks in advance, in fact.
There is so much sugar in the sauce, that it will keep in your fridge for an extended period of time. High sugar content inhibits bacterial growth. Giving foods like jellys, jams, curds, and syrups longer shelf life.
You can absolutely use frozen cranberries to make cranberry sauce. In fact, frozen cranberries cook a little faster than fresh cranberries and there’s no detriment to flavor. Why?
Freezing anything forces the water in it’s cells to crystallize, sometimes breaking cellular structures. The more fibrous fruit and vegetables are the less breakage there is and vice versa. Think defrosted broccoli versus raspberries. Raspberries don’t stand a chance. Cranberries will be noticeably softer after defrosting, but their thicker skins protect their structure a bit. So, freezing gets you part way there on breaking down cranberries and boiling get you the rest of the way.
As long as there is no freezer burn on the cranberries and they were frozen at peak ripeness, cranberries from the freezer will taste the same as fresh ones.
Also, yes! The sauce can be frozen in tupperware or silicone molds and stored for up to 3 months.
The best way to defrost cranberry sauce is by leaving it in your refrigerator to slowly un-freeze.
You can also leave it on your counter to come up to room temperature because there’s not as big of a worry about salmonella and other bacteria like there would be with animal proteins.
The last option is to reheat the cranberry sauce on a stove top. Put in in a pot, on low, with a tablespoon or two (15-30ml) of water and let it re-heat.
Blending and straining are technically unnecessary. Especially if you are looking for a rustic cranberry sauce. The levels of texture from rustic to silky use the following tools/techniques:
1. Simply boiled and then chilled
2. Mixed with an immersion blender
3. Blended in a high powdered stand blender
4. Blended in high powdered stand blender and then strained through a fine mesh strainer (Instructions for my recipe use #4)
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