Easy Cinnamon Apple Cranberry Sauce Recipe - Rachel Cooks® (2024)

FAQs

Why isn t my cranberry sauce thickening? ›

One possibility is that you may not have used enough sugar: Sugar helps the sauce firm up, so be sure to use the full amount called for in a recipe. Another possibility is that the cranberries need to boil for longer, releasing their pectin and ensuring a jelly consistency.

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.

It's perfectly fine to serve up cranberry sauce — whole berry or jelled — straight out of the can. But in my experience, heating the canned sauce up takes its flavor to the next level. Plus, it becomes a little more aesthetically pleasing.

This side dish has become essential to Thanksgiving menus, whether you opt to buy it (as 76% of Americans do) or make it yourself. It's hard to pinpoint exactly who invented the concept of cranberry sauce. Native Americans have been growing and eating the fruit, which is indigenous to North America, for centuries.

Reduce heat to a low boil and cook for 10 minutes, until the berries have all burst. Remove from heat. Serve warm, room temperature, or chilled. Cranberry sauce will thicken as it cools.

Mistake #2: Your Cranberry Sauce Is Too Runny

You may have added too much liquid to the cranberries. In addition to pectin, cranberries contain water, which means you only need to add a splash of liquid to get the cooking going. Add too much and you'll be stirring at the stove much longer than expected.

The sugar in the syrup helps the mixture thicken. It could also be because you haven't cooked the mixture long enough. The cranberries need to cook long enough to burst so that they release plenty of pectin which is a thickener naturally found in cranberries.

Dear Evelyn: I had the same problem when I first started making my own cranberry sauce. I found out that you should cook them just until they pop. Further cooking will make them bitter, and once that happens, you need to start again.

"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)."

Plating a Can of Jellied Cranberry Sauce

The traditional way of serving jellied cranberry sauce is sliced into rounds. With the column set on its side, slice into ¼-inch thick rounds and then arrange the slices on a serving platter. Serve the slices plain, garnished as desired, or read on for easy upgrades.

What is the difference between jellied cranberry sauce and whole cranberry sauce? ›

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 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.

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.

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.”

The most readily available sauce-thickener is flour. For a too-thin sauce, try adding a slurry (equal parts flour and water, whisked together) or beurre manie (equal parts softened butter and flour, kneaded together to form a paste)—both are ideal thickeners for rich and creamy sauces, such as steak sauce recipes.

Use Flour and Water

Combine 2 tablespoons flour with every 1/4 cup cold water and whisk until smooth. Add the mixture to your sauce over medium heat, and continue to stir and cook until you've reached your desired consistency.

Add a little sugar. Sugar doesn't thicken in quite the same way as starch or fat, but it does make your sauce stickier, and getting your sauce to stick to the food is the entire point. Adding sugar to water creates a solution that is thicker than water, and further heating (boiling or simmering) makes it even thicker.

When the cranberries are heated, the berries begin to break down and pop open. The pectin is then released and reacts with the sugar and juices to form long polymers and thicken the sauce. This process creates the cranberry sauces and jellies which are so familiar at holiday dinners.