3-Ingredient Cranberry Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you cut the tartness out of cranberry sauce? ›

Add A Splash Of Vinegar

Their sharp tang counteracts bitter flavors without having to add extra sugar. While citrus is a natural pairing for cranberry sauce, bright, savory vinegars like sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and apple cider vinegar play well with the bitter-tart berries.

Adding a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon or orange zest, a tablespoon of chopped candied peel, or even a splash of juice to your canned sauce will brighten flavors and bring in some homemade flavor.

Sugar helps the thickening process, and while it's nice to try to keep your cranberry sauce from being too sugary sweet, you will need at least some sugar to make it work well (about 1/2 cup sugar per 12-ounce bag of cranberries).

Cranberry sauce can be served either as a gooey liquid or as a solid jelly. The jellied version is solid enough to retain the shape of the container in which it's placed whereas the sauce version is much more fluid. The difference between the fluid sauce and the jelly versions comes down to pectin.

"Instead, start by stirring in one tablespoon maple syrup and one teaspoon of a sweet drink like apple juice, orange juice, or fruity white or red wine. Add more to taste. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt (in small amounts, it intensifies sweetness)."

How Do You Neutralize Sour Taste in Food? If a dish is too sour, add a little bit of sugar! Sweetness balances out sour flavors, so if something makes your mouth pucker, a dash of sugar may help soften the blow of the sour food.

Try reducing the sauce down even further so more of the liquid cooks off and the mixture thickens. If that doesn't work, add a thickener like gelatin, pectin or a cornstarch slurry (cornstarch whisked into juice or water). Let the sauce cool before refrigerating to completely set.

You must cook the sauce for at least 10 minutes at a full boil for the pectin to react with the sugar and create the proper gelled texture. It is also important to let the cranberry sauce cool at room temperature. Moving it to the refrigerator too soon may also affect the gel.

But why? Ocean Spray says this is to get the cranberry sauce out in one intact piece. “The rounded part of the can that looks like the bottom has an air bubble in it,” Ocean Spray's representative explains. The bubble is there so you can “break the seal the sauce makes with the can.”

What to do if the cranberry sauce is too thin or loose. If you inadvertently added too much water, simply bring the cranberry sauce back to the stove top and bring it to a low boil, cooking it down just a bit to help thicken it up.

How to tell when cranberry sauce is done? ›

Pull the sauce off the stove once you hear or see the first few cranberries burst. You want some of them to burst but others to remain whole for the best texture. The sauce can be made up to 1 week in advance; keep refrigerated, and do not add the nuts until Thanksgiving Day, a few hours before serving.

Cranberry sauce is supposed to be a balance of sweet and tart. The sauce acts as a cleansing port in a tumultuous storm of fat and salt, but the effect is lost if the sauce is too sweet. Luckily, there is a very easy way to fix an over-sugared homemade sauce: You just need a little citric acid.

The major variation you're likely to come across is "whole berry" versus "jellied." The only difference between them is that the jellied sauce is cooked until the berries have completely broken down. They both slide out of the can as a wobbly red cylinder.

But that's not the case for prepared cranberry sauces, where prices are up. Lochner pointed out that processors set those prices, not growers, and that there are higher input costs unrelated to berries — like “processing the fruit and getting it to market.” Ocean Spray isn't immune either.

Health Benefits

Cranberries are also rich in vitamin C and fiber, as well as the metabolism-boosting mineral manganese. And yes, you reap all these benefits whether the cranberry sauce on your holiday table is homemade or canned, jellied or whole-berry.

If the sauce is too sour, add more sweetener.

If you find the recipe as written is a bit too tart, keep adding honey 1 tablespoon of honey until you reach your desired sweetness.

Even a small amount of baking soda significantly raises the pH of the sauce. While this reduces acidic taste, it also tamps down on the brightness that gives the tomato complexity.

How to Make Food Less Acidic. Add a fat such as butter, heavy cream, sour cream, cheese, or olive oil to coat the tongue and physically block some of the acidity from your taste buds. You might also try adding a sweetener such as sugar, honey, or maple syrup.

Anything from a drizzle of honey to agave, maple syrup, or molasses will also fare well. After a few minutes of maceration, the sour fruit juices will mix with the sugar and alleviate some of the cranberries' natural tartness.