Christmas dinner just isn’t complete without cranberry sauce. A bowl of this bright red and shiny sauce will instantly brighten up your table and make it look and feel festive. You can also lightly drizzle some around the turkey so that your guests can instantly scoop up a bit of cranberry sauce when helping themselves to the meat. And of course it goes really well with leftovers. One of my favourite things about Christmas dinner is all the leftovers! In my home, we grew up with having Christmas dinner at lunchtime and in the evening we would serve up all kinds of delicious snacks and leftovers. The turkey and cranberry sandwiches were always the best and for me that is what Christmas dinner is all about. I think we actually go to more effort using up the leftovers than we do for the big day itself! While making Christmas dinner is in no way an easy job, it is amazing to look at all the recipes out there for your leftovers. And cranberry sauce is one of the dishes that works so well with all the remaining food, which is why I purposely make more than required.
I think we should be using cranberries more often and not just for Christmas. I assume the reason for this is that cranberries are not really grown in Europe but they have become such a big part of Christmas that you can easily get your hands on them during the winter months at a good price. They taste delicious and a cranberry sauce goes really well with roasted or cold meats, cheese or with a salad. You can also make this sauce as part of these Pork and Cranberry Christmas Crackers.
I can see why people buy shop bought cranberry sauce. It does have that taste that you can’t get from homemade and for many it is the taste of Christmas. But also making your own is so easy and delicious. Cranberry sauce can be made in minutes, involves very few ingredients and only one pan.
- 100g caster sugar
- Juice of half an orange
- 500g cranberries
- 2 tbpsn port
- Dash of white wine
- 2 small apples (peeled, core removed and finely chopped)
- 1 tspn cinnamon powder
- Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and mix well. Bring to a boil and them simmer until the cranberries are tender are start to burst slightly (you want some of them to still keep their shape). This will take around 5 mins.
- Remove from the heat and leave to cool. Keeps nicely in the fridge for up to 4 days. Take out of the fridge around 1 hour before serving.
Leave a Reply