Spruce Up Your Cranberry Sauce with Stir-ins

Probably everyone in North America knows of or has eaten cranberry sauce at some point during their lifetime. Most likely they were served cranberry sauce with their Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday dinner. It is called a sauce or relish but it is more of a gelatin made with cranberries. It is made either sour or sweet depending on the region is served -- in North America it is usually sweet.

Authentic, homemade cranberry sauce is made by boiling fresh or frozen cranberries in sugar water until the berries pop and cooled until it thickens. When the berries pop, they release pectin, which is the agent that makes cranberry sauce thicken until it is like gelatin.

Most of us do not make homemade cranberry sauce because it is a bit of work. For those of us who eat cranberry sauce, we usually encounter the commercial jellied cranberry sauce in cans sold in supermarkets.

Canned cranberry sauce is not very delectable to many people, especially after the cranberry sauce is dumped out onto a plate while retaining the shape of the can. Let's face it a lump of dark red gelatin in a tubular shape is not very pleasing to the eye. After it is dumped out, it is usually cut into slices and a few are served to each person. It looks a little better sliced but still not that great. The cranberry sauce can be chopped up a little bit and it usually doesn't make a difference because it will be cut as it eaten anyway.

An alternative to boring old canned cranberry sauce can be accomplished by simply melting the cranberry sauce in a pot and pouring it into a fancy-shaped container, such as an empty Bundt cake pan with its fancy wavy shape, and allowing it to set for a few hours or overnight until it re-molds into the shape of the pan or other container.

Cranberries contain their own pectin which allows cranberry sauce to be reset and re-molded a few times but for serving purposes, once is probably enough. It can't be done too many times because the pectin will not reset with repeated attempts.

Taking it a step further, other ingredients may be added to the cranberry sauce before it resets for a better appearance and better taste than your plain old canned cranberry sauce. The sky is the limit on what can be added to the cranberry sauce. You do need to be careful with bigger ingredients, such as pineapples or other fruits, because there might not be enough pectin in the sauce to support the weight of heavier stir-ins and you also need to be careful with fruits, like kiwi, which might interfere with the setting of the sauce. If you plan on adding chunky ingredients, it might be a good idea to add extra gelatin to the cranberry sauce for extra support and added flavor if you use a flavored gelatin.

After seeing an episode of "Good Eats" with Alton Brown in which he describes re-molding cranberry sauce with different stir-ins, I knew I had to experiment a little bit with it.

As a kid, I never liked cranberry sauce because of its bitterness but it grew on me as I became older. Now I like it occasionally with my turkey or ham during the holidays but it's not something I really love. There always seems to be something missing with my cranberry sauce -- probably a combination of the shape and texture of it.

As soon as I came up with the idea of experimenting with my cranberry sauce, I immediately thought of oranges and raspberries, not at the same time but those were my top two individual choices.

I went with the oranges first. I considered orange juice and/or canned Mandarin oranges but changed my mind and thought that orange marmalade would make the perfect stir-in for my cranberry sauce and that is what we used. It turned out pretty good and some of my family liked it but it was a little bit too sweet for my taste. Some of you might like the sweetness of it or you can add a little bit less orange marmalade. I used three tablespoons of marmalade and it really gave the cranberry sauce a nice orange flavor that was not overpowering.

I used a standard 14 ounce can of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce. It contains very few ingredients including, cranberries, high fructose corn syrup, water, and corn syrup. There is no gelatin so vegetarians can eat this without a problem.

Below is my recipe for orange cranberry sauce that I made and what follows is a list of other stir-in ideas.

Ingredients

14 ounce can jellied cranberry sauce
Cooking pot
3 tablespoons orange marmalade

Directions

Pour the cranberry sauce from the can into a small cooking pot on low heat. Heat the cranberry sauce for a few minutes until it becomes a liquid but do not boil. It should be just slightly hotter than warm.

Stir the orange marmalade into the liquid cranberry sauce in the pot and thoroughly blend. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the sauce to cool off until lukewarm.

Pour the cranberry sauce into a container, such as a Bundt pan or even back into the can you want it to return to that shape. Allow it to cool for several hours or overnight until the cranberry sauce returns to its gelatinous state.

Other Stir-in Ideas

There is an endless number of ingredients that can be added to cranberry sauce. As I said, I used orange marmalade and I also plan on using frozen raspberries for my next batch (half cup to one cup). Other suggested stir-ins include almonds, orange juice, zest, ginger, maple syrup, cinnamon, pineapples, apples, peaches, pumpkin spice, nutmeg, hot peppers, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, and sour cream. These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Usually about half a cup of any ingredient is enough for each 14 ounce can of cranberry sauce. Go crazy!

Source: Wikipedia, Ocean Spray, Food Network