Fresh Cranberry Sauce Is 100 Times Better Than the Wiggly Canned Stuff

10 minutes is all you need to make it

Kim Duke
Heated

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Cranberries on the stove.
Photo: Lil’ Luna

I recently spent a weekend foraging for low bush cranberries in the boreal forest. These delicious little cranberries have their name for a reason — they grow about an inch off the ground. My back hurt and I was sweaty but I had one thing in mind: wild cranberry sauce.

If you’re a lover of cranberries as I am, and you still haven’t made your own cranberry sauce — and the boreal forest isn’t handy, well, this is the year to do it. For just a few bucks you can purchase a bag of fresh cranberries at your grocery store and walk right past the canned stuff.

There are some people on this planet who like cranberries from a can. I can only think of one reason: They’ve never had the real thing.

Two label-less cans with a can-shaped cranberry sauce between them.
Photo: NWphotoguy/iStock/Getty Images Plus

I even know someone who had never tried fresh cranberry sauce before. He liked hearing the squish and squidge of the cranberry jelly plop onto the plate. And then he actually sliced it along the lines. Oh yes, he did.

So when I brought fresh, chunky homemade cranberry sauce to his place for dinner a few years ago…

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