5-Ingredient Cranberry Sauce Recipe - Sally's Baking Addiction (2024)

FAQs

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

"Resist adding granulated sugar—you won't get the full effect unless you reheat the sauce and the sugar dissolves," writes Kelsey Kloss. "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.

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.

Nutritional Facts Face-Off

We can see there is a significant difference in the nutrition facts between the two sauces. The homemade cranberry sauce has nearly half the calories, carbohydrates, and sugars compared to the store brand. It also has more fiber as well as potassium!

Spike cranberry sauce with citrus

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.

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 A Softer Sweetener

It's already liquid so it will stir right into the cranberry sauce, lending it a gentle sweetness. If you don't have maple syrup (pancake syrup WILL NOT do, y'all), try honey or a more neutral sweetener like agave syrup, brown rice syrup, or even simple syrup.

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.

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.

Best Whole Berry: Ocean Spray Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce

For those who prefer a whole berry sauce, Ocean Spray was the clear winner. Not only did editors love it for the freshness, texture, and flavor, but several also noted that it was the most visually appealing of the bunch.

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.”

Should cranberry sauce be served cold or room temperature? ›

Should homemade cranberry sauce be served cold? You'll want to cool your homemade cranberry sauce to room temperature first, as hot liquids can crack pretty serving dishes! After that, chilling it will not only help the cranberry sauce thicken and gel, but it preserves it as well.

When to Toss Cranberry Sauce. Cranberry sauce will last for two hours at room temperature. Homemade cranberry sauce will last in the fridge for 10 to 14 days. Canned cranberry sauce that has been opened will last up to a week in the fridge.

Mistake #4: Your Cranberry Sauce Is Too Bitter

Obviously, we can't lose the cranberries, but you can swap out the water for orange juice, apple cider or grape juice. The sugar, while necessary, doesn't need to be granulated. Maple syrup, brown sugar and even honey can make your cranberry sauce more dynamic.

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.

Instead, the pectin polymers will bind to each other, giving the cranberry mixture more and more structure. The sweet sugar-water molecules get trapped in between the pectin chains, resulting in a tasty cranberry sauce!

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.

My cranberry sauce is too sweet now that I taste it. How do I fix it? Add a splash of red wine or apple cider vinegar and a pinch of salt to lessen sweetness.

You can smooth out your sauce and remove the tartness by adding cream, butter, cream cheese, and/or grated cheese such as Parmesan.

Tartness is a subset of sourness, but it implies that the acidity is coming specifically from citrus. It's easily counteracted with a small amount of sugar, honey or maple syrup.