| So I was reading a story last week, about how BPA – a toxin – was found in cans of cranberry sauce.
My first reaction was “Whatever!”, seeing as how I learned the joy of homemade cranberry sauce YEARS ago. I’ve been making my own since… jeez, maybe age 16? Once you’ve had homemade, you just can’t bring yourself to eat the canned stuff. Then I thought something along the lines of “OMG… people still eat canned?!”. After I mentally smacked myself for thinking so elitist and snotty, I realized that this would be a great subject for a blog entry! |
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Cranberry sauce is super easy to make. If you follow the basic recipe on most bags of cranberries, it only costs about $1 more than canned, and takes less than 10 minutes. Trust me, TOTALLY worth the effort!
My recipe takes only slightly longer than the basic recipe, and an extra dollar or two in ingredients. Again, that slight investment is a HUGE improvement, even over basic homemade sauce! If you haven’t tried making your own yet, maybe this is the year?
Orange-Ginger Cranberry Sauce
2 oranges
2″ ‘finger’ of fresh ginger root
1 cup sugar
12 oz bag of fresh cranberries, washed and picked through
Use a grater or zesting plane to remove all of the zest from both oranges. Peel ginger and slice into a few thin disks.
Juice both oranges into a measuring cup – you’ll want about 1 cup of fresh juice. If you don’t get 1 cup of juice, top up with water or Grand Marnier.
Combine zest, juice, ginger slices and sugar in pot. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, allow mixture to steep for 30 minutes.
Once mixture has steeped, remove ginger from the pot and discard. Add cranberries, bring mixture to a boil.
Cook, stirring frequently, until all of the cranberries have rendered down into a thick sauce. Remove from heat, cool to room temperature. Chill until serving.
Garnish bowl of cranberry sauce with a little curl of orange peel, if you want to be even fancier about it!
