Community Table: Ditch the Canned Cranberry Sauce

I grew up with canned cranberry jellied sauce so I know how easy it was to sit at the table and wait for someone to pop open the can, give it a few taps, and wait for that long, slow plop, as it hit the plate. Making your own cranberry jellied sauce is delicious, easy and rewarding—without the plop.

CRANBERRY JELLIED SAUCE

Servings: approximately 4 (recipe can bedoubled)

Ingredients

12 ounce bag of whole cranberries
1 large orange for zest and juice (2 small ones will do as well)
1 cup of sugar
1 whole cinnamon stick and a few whole cloves wrapped in cheesecloth. (Or 2 pinches of ground cloves and cinnamon.)

Instructions

Add whole cranberries to medium pot.

Place zest of 1 orange in small plasticcontainer or ramekin and set aside.

Squeeze the juice of the orange and add enoughwater to make 1 cup. Add this to cranberries. Add 1 cup of sugar andcheesecloth with spices.

Stir on medium-high heat until cranberries startto pop and thicken. Continue stirring, using the back of a spoon to smash anyremaining whole cranberries.

Once sauce is thick, remove the cheesecloth andallow the sauce to cool a few minutes.

Puree the sauce in a blender until smooth.Strain out sauce into the container with the zest and stir until well blended.

Cover the top of the sauce with cellophane wrapor parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove paper, run a knife aroundthe container to loosen and pop onto a plate.

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