Cranberry Sauce: From the Bog to Mind-Boggling

About author / Rebecca Michaels

Queen of the desserts and pastry chef extraordinaire; graduate French Culinary Institute; Golden Scoop Award winner; Flying Monkey Bakery founder

People, people, why do you do it?! And you do it every year. Without fail. It's your "famous secret-recipe signature dish." It's what people know you for. Your guests love it, right? So much so that they'd rather admire it on their plate than eat it. I hate to break it to you, but I'm talking about your canned cranberry sauce. Stop the party and slapped wrists to you--you know who you are! You have no excuses for this travesty unless you live in a bunker, in which case I'll let it slide. But do hear me out.

I feel it is my duty as a professional chef to have an intervention for those of you who still insist that making cranberry sauce out of that scary, slippery can of red jelly-ish stuff is okay. It is not. I beg you. Your family and friends beg you. They just don't want to tell you. Well I can (no pun intended for sure!) and I will.

Cranberries are available only through fall and winter. They are a little red wetlands fruit, grown primarily in the bogs of Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts and the coastal Northwest. They are very good for you; loaded with vitamin C, they are commonly used in the folk tradition to help urinary tract infections, ulcers and gum disease. And they were eaten by sailors to ward off scurvy. You don't want scurvy now, do you?

Cranberries generally need to be cooked in order to make them taste good, as they are extremely tart raw. But cooking them with sugar or adding them to your favorite quickbread recipe will tone them down, leaving just a hint of that sourness. A helpful tip: when making cranberry bread or muffins, cut your cranberries in half before adding them to the batter. This way when they heat up in the oven, they won't explode and leave those tell-tale holes where your cranberries used to be when you slice your quickbread.

But back to cranberry sauce. Many people take the sauce for granted. They consider it a condiment, nothing more or nothing less. But freshly made cranberry sauce will not only add a lovely color and texture to your holiday dinner plate, it will also add that tiny bit of sweetness that so many people are fond of with their turkey or brisket. It's sort of an appetizer for dessert!

My cranberry sauce recipe is so easy, you won't even believe it. Now I admit, it's not quite as easy as using a can opener, but I guarantee you, it is well worth the extra ten minutes of effort. Your dinner guests will thank you. And they might even take seconds!

Serves/Makes: 8

• 1 bag cranberries, picked over
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon grated orange zest
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger (don't use powder)