Its tangy-sweet flavor cuts the richness of turkey and stuffing, its crimson color brightens an otherwise beige meal. Whether you adore it or ignore it, your Thanksgiving table demands at least one bowl of cranberry sauce. And of all the dishes on the menu, it is one of the easiest to make yourself. It comes in three main genres: classic gelled cranberry sauce, quivering cranberry jelly and fresh raw cranberry sauce.
Make It Ahead
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Cranberry sauce is one of the first things you can cross off your Thanksgiving list. Make a batch before you even start defrosting the turkey.
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Homemade cranberry sauce keeps for about a week. Cover it well and store it in the fridge.
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Don’t be tempted to freeze cranberry sauce; the structure will break down, and you could lose the gelling.
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A raw sauce has a shorter shelf life than a more stable cooked one. You can make it a day or two ahead. If you see liquid starting to pool, drain it off and give the sauce a good stir.
Classic Cranberry Sauce
Sweetened with sugar and seasoned with orange juice, this is the most traditional way to make cranberry sauce. It’s also one of the best.
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Basic Method
Place one 12-ounce bag fresh or thawed frozen cranberries in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and pour over these 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup fresh orange juice. Stir to combine.
Cook until sugar is entirely melted and cranberries begin to burst in the heat, 4 to 6 minutes. Stir again, add the zest of one orange, and cook for 2 or 3 minutes longer, turn off heat, cover pan, and allow to cool.
Put cranberry mixture in a serving bowl, cover, and place in refrigerator until cold, at least 2 hours, or until you need it.
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Tips
• If you are using frozen cranberries, there is no need to defrost before cooking.
• 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.
• If your sauce doesn’t set after you’ve chilled it, put it back on the stove and simmer it for another 5 minutes or so, then let it cool and chill. That should do the trick.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Cranberry Jelly
A shimmering cranberry jelly need not come from a can. This homemade version is bracing, syrupy and pleasingly wobbly. A touch of Lillet makes it sophisticated as well.
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Basic Method
In a heavy saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups Lillet, 1/2 cup orange liqueur (like Grand Marnier), 2 cups sugar and, if you’d like, 2 tablespoons juniper berries for a dash of spice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Add two 12-ounce bags of fresh or frozen cranberries (about 8 cups) to the pot and return to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until all the cranberries burst and are very soft, at least 10 minutes.
Strain the sauce into a bowl through a sieve, pushing on the solids with a rubber spatula to extract all the liquid. Discard the solids. Stir the liquid and transfer to a pretty serving bowl or a mold. (A funnel or liquid measuring cup with a spout can be useful for transferring without splashing the sides.)
Cover and refrigerate. It will firm up within a few hours, or can be made several days ahead. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.
If you chilled the jelly in a mold, you’ll need to turn it out. To do so, place the mold in a large bowl. Carefully pour hot water into the bowl so it comes up the sides of the mold, melting the jelly just enough to release it from the mold. After 3 minutes, try unmolding the jelly onto a serving dish. If it doesn’t come out, return to the bowl and try again 2 minutes later. Repeat until the jelly is released. If necessary, return it to the refrigerator to firm up before serving.
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Tips
• Make it nonalcoholic, or play around with the flavor: Use 2 cups of orange juice, red wine, port or Madeira instead of the Lillet and the orange liqueur.
• You can serve the jelly directly from a simple glass bowl, but the fun here is using different shaped molds. A small ornate Bundt pan is nice, and you can fill the center with sour cream or diced fresh pineapple. Pouring the jelly into clean empty cans is an amusing sleight of hand: “canned” cranberry sauce. Or pour the mixture into a plain metal bowl, then unmold it onto a fancy plate and surround it with a combination of dried cranberries and toasted pecan or walnut halves.
• Make sure the water your use to unmold your jelly is quite hot, not just warm. The idea is to melt the outer jelly layer enough so that the whole mold can slip right out.
• To avoid drips, after dipping the cranberry jelly mold into the hot water, dry the outside of the mold with a kitchen towel before turning it onto your plate.
Melina Hammer for The New York Times
Raw Cranberry Sauce
Raw cranberry sauce, or cranberry relish as it is also known, is snappier and fresher than the cooked kind. Even better, you can make it in under 10 minutes.
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Basic Method
This bright and bracing mixture doesn’t really need a recipe — just a food processor. Put half of a navel orange (peel, pith and all), a cup of fresh cranberries, and half a cup of toasted walnuts or pecans (if you’d like), in the food processor and pulse together until everything is finely chopped. Add sugar by tablespoons until it tastes good. The white parts of the orange give the fresh sauce a pleasant bitterness that mellows over time.
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Tips
• If you don’t have a food processor, you can make this with a meat or nut grinder. Or even a knife will work, though it will take you a while. Don’t use a blender, which will reduce everything to juice.
• Don’t overprocess the mixture. Pulse it just until it comes together. The chunky texture is part of its charm.
• Make this within 48 hours of serving. Unlike other cranberry sauces, it won’t get better sitting for longer than that, and if you use nuts, they will lose their crunch. If the liquid starts to pool, drain it off and give the whole thing a stir.
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times
Nuts, Chiles and Other Additions
Classic cranberry sauce satisfies the traditionalists in your clan, but going rogue is easy if you’ve got the urge. Here are some ideas for jazzing up the flavor and texture.
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• Nuts add richness and crunch. Try pecans, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, pistachios or whatever your heart desires. Toast them first, then add them within a few hours of serving so they don’t lose their snap in the fridge.
• Chopped dried fruit adds sweetness and a pleasant chewiness to cranberry sauce. Stir them into your sauce after it has cooked but while it’s still warm.
• Dried cranberries, strawberries and cherries intensify the berry factor; you don’t need to chop them. Dried apricots and pears add color and a honeylike flavor; slice into bite-sized pieces before stirring into the sauce. Candied ginger adds a gentle bite; chop it finely before using so it’s well distributed into the sauce.
• Figs and dates give cranberry sauce Mediterranean verve. Slice them before adding. You could also add a few drops of rose water or orange blossom water to the sauce as well.
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Cranberries are more sour than sweet, and you’ll need some kind of sugar to balance out that acid. Changing up the sweetener is a way to tweak the flavor of your sauce.
• White sugar, which most recipes use, leaves you with the cleanest and purest cranberry flavor. Brown sugar adds a caramel richness, though it muddies the vivid scarlet of what may be the only colorful thing on the table.
• Liquid sweeteners, including honey, maple syrup and agave, can also be used, but you’ll have to reduce the liquid in the recipe to make up for the addition. Or let the mixture simmer for an extra minute to cook off some of the moisture. Rule of thumb: when it looks like loose jam, pull it off the heat. It will thicken as it cools.
• If you want something on the tart side, start out with less sugar than the recipes calls for, then add more to taste.
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Liqueurs, spirits, wine and fruit juices add depth to cranberry sauce, and can be used in place of some or all the water in any given recipe. If you’re adding something sweet, you may want to reduce the added sugar in the recipe. Be aware that most but not all of the alcohol will cook off during the simmering.
• Orange is a classic cranberry match in the form of orange juice or Grand Marnier. But other flavors work well, too.
• Consider apple cider and applejack, brandy, Bourbon, Chambord, red or white wine, vermouth or a fortified wine such as port, Madeira or Lillet.
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Adding aromatics turns the usual jamlike cranberry sauce into more of a complex chutney.
• Fresh chiles and fresh ginger bring sharpness and heat. Mince chiles and discard the seeds, or finely grate the ginger, then add to the pot along with the cranberries.
• Sweet spices (cinnamon, clove, allspice) give a perfumed warmth. Stir in ground spices to taste at during the last minute or two of cooking. If you want to use whole spices, wrap them in cheese cloth so you’ll be able to discard them easily later, and add them along with the cranberries to they have time to infuse.
• Herbs like bay leaf and thyme can add a woodsy note. Wrap them in cheese cloth or tie them into a bundle with kitchen twine, and add them with the cranberries. Discard after cooking.
• Freshly grated citrus zest lends brightness. Add them to taste after you’ve pulled the cranberry sauce off the heat.