I am Thanksgiving. I made cheer. I seized power. I created cranberry sauce, and it tastes and looks and feels exactly like cranberry sauce.It was very easy to make. I had, let's see, probably about a half-pound of cranberries (fresh cranberries from the co-op). A little bit of orange juice. An apple (Golden Delicious, from the co-op). Sugar. Nutmeg. Cloves.
You heat the cranberries in a pan (cast-iron skillet in my case).
When they start to pop (literally, you will hear them pop and see them splitting - watch....),
add sugar (you will need a lot, so just add some and then as it's cooking, keep tasting and adding more if needed), nutmeg (a little), a few cloves, the apple - diced very small (I used 3/4 of the apple), and splash on some orange juice (I used a very small amount of orange juice; just remember what consistency you want to end up with, kind of gelatinous; you will also probably add more orange juice little by little as it cooks).
Once the cranberries have started to pop, you don't want to cook them any longer than 15 minutes, or the pectin will break down in a bad way and it won't set properly. So add these ingredients, stir it up, start tasting the juices and adding sugar as needed, add a little more orange juice now and then if it's dry and it hasn't cooked for about 15 minutes yet.
When it's sweet and the apples and cranberries are soft and it's getting a little gelatinous, turn off the heat, put foil over the pan and let it sit in the steam and the fruit will continue to soften and the gel will firm up a little. Then you can put it in a bowl and put it in the fridge if you want to serve it cold. Make sure you taste it as it is cooking, so you get it the right sweetness. After you set the cranberry sauce aside, heat up some leftover vegan Field Roast, potatoes, sweet potatoes and asparagus, and throw it on a plate with your homemade cranberry sauce and some apple sauce. Mashed potatoes and gravy would also be a great option. Sweet corn. Green bean casserole. Pumpkin pie. I had a brownie for dessert. :)
Does it look perfect?! And it tastes perfect, refreshing, sweet but not too sweet, gelatinous, the whole nine yards. Wish I had more sweet potatoes, is all. Mmm, can't get over this cranberry sauce.
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Wow! That looks so good. I'll try that cranberry recipe.
ReplyDeleteI have to make more. I'm hooked.
ReplyDeleteFriend, Edith, just gave me a recipe for cranberries. Whole Cranberries cooked up with a whole Orange, cut in pieces. Add 2 small pkgs of raspberry jello with half the water required on the packages and let it jell.
ReplyDeleteI got oranges to use for my next batch. Last time I just used orange juice. They had these teeny little oranges at the co-op and I thought a whole one of them would be perfect.
ReplyDeleteI never add anything to make cranberry sauce gel... I like the whole berry to be a little runny... but the version you made with the apples looks good.
ReplyDeleteSince I feed a diabetic, we don't use sugar in it, but that Splenda stuff, which you can cook with. I just heat my berries in a very little water until they pop, then mash them a bit more with a fork or bean masher and stir in the sweetening. We had wild Maine berries to play with this Thanksgiving and have several more bags of the domestic ones left.
Did you know that not all cranberries are tiny? That is what Ocean Spray growers grow and they became the industry standard. The ones we got from a fellow vendor at the farmers market are the size of large grapes!! But most of the local ones sold in stores are Ocean Spray size, even if they were not grown by that bunch.
I have made this twice now. The 2nd time, I used 3 small mandarin oranges and no apple. I definitely prefer to include the apple, because without it, I had to use much more sugar to get it to not be bitter. Next time, I'm going to get a very sweet apple and use less sugar. Both times, it has gelled on its own and the 2nd time, it gelled up just as firm as Jello.
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