Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

I have never made cranberry sauce but I had some cranberries that I got in a Christmas gift which I immediately put in the freezer knowing that I would have to figure out what to do with them later.  I saw this recipe on line when I spent way too much time on Pinterest one night. 

I had also frozen the end of the orange juice that I had eaten so I knew that I could totally make this with things straight from the freezer!!  Love that I save everything even though I don't know what it I going to use them for.

I put the cranberries in the pot first because they were frozen.  Then, I picked out the ugly ones....Who knows what happened to them but I figured that they didn't taste good.



I added the slightly defrosted orange juice to the pot and then sugar.





Then, I stirred with my spatula to combine.



Then I got the juice up to boiling, and the cranberries started to crack open.  Can you see a few of them with lines on them?



I wasn't sure if I was doing it right but I figured that it wasn't much of a loss and then the cranberries started breaking open.  Awesome!!  I did it right!!  Woo Hoo!!!  After boiling and stirring more, the red started to come out more and more. 


After a little longer boiling, I had something that looked like cranberry sauce.






I boiled a little longer to combine all of the jelly like substance and it looked like this in the pot with nothing else added.  I was excited that it turned out so well!!




I took the hot sauce and put it in a container straight into the fridge with plans on sticking it in the blender the next day.

I don't like canned cranberry sauce but my husband does and it will go great with a roasted chicken.  We both tried it with the chicken and enjoyed it even though we didn't even make a dent in the big container that I had.  I decided to freeze it to figure out what to do next.

If it turns out that it isn't something he wants to eat again then I am going to make it into salad dressing like the recipe here.  Either way, it is a win win for using up things in the freezer and making good food.  Have you ever made cranberry sauce from scratch??

2 comments:

  1. Oh I have frozen cranberries and most of a container of frozen OJ concentrate too so it would be a good recipe for me... but I'm keeping the cranberries to make cranberry clafoutis or that double pumpkin bread with cranberries and raisins, lol. It would go well with chicken, you're right, I've never thought to serve it with anything else than turkey when we roast one. Greg likes the canned jellied kind, I prefer the whole cranberry sauce. I don't think I've ever made it myself (because he insists on getting the jellied kind and he has to hear the slurping noise it makes as it leaves the can.. weirdo!) but my former mother-in-law made an excellent cranberry jello mold at Thanksgiving that had walnuts in it too and cool whip, I think, and it was out of this world. I had asked her for her recipe but by then she had misplaced it so I never got it :( I still think about it with fondness every Thanksgiving, lol. This year I'm going to buy a lot of fresh cranberries when they're on sale.

    Let us know how the salad dressing turned out!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My husband loves the canned cranberry jelly at the holidays. We both agreed that it was tasty but I put it in the freezer so that I could make my salad dressing later. YUM!! I will let you know. I hope that you try to make this sometime soon because it really was a tasty and easy treat that I didn't know I could actually make!! Super easy :)

      Delete

Thank you for visiting my blog today! I really appreciate any input or ideas so add your comment below.