It’s official. I am now obsessed with reading labels. I cannot go to the grocery store without looking at the labels of everything I buy and comparing brands and ingredients. Most of the time at a conventional grocery store, looking at labels makes me sad (and I end up putting the products back on the shelf instead of in my cart). Unfortunately, canned cranberry sauce falls into the category of something I probably won’t buy anymore.
I used to love the stuff…and I actually liked the way it still looks like a can after you put it on a serving platter. But now that I know the canned stuff is full of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, the fun of eating it is gone. Luckily, homemade cranberry sauce is actually a breeze to make (and it’s mighty tasty too)!
After finding fresh cranberries for $1/lb, I had to give homemade cranberry sauce a shot. I’m so glad I did!
Here’s how I made the cranberry sauce:
Homemade Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce (serves a small crowd as a side dish)
Ingredients
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of water
- 1 lb of fresh or frozen cranberries
Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the cranberries, lower the heat, and gently boil the mixture for at least 10 minutes. You can boil the mixture for a bit longer to reduce the liquid more for a thicker sauce (or you can reduce the amount of water used to about 3/4 cup or so). Pour the cranberry sauce into a heat-resistant container, cover, and allow to cool at room temperature. Once cooled, refrigerate until ready to serve.
I loved the taste of the homemade cranberry sauce. The berries are pleasantly tart, and I prefer using real pure cane sugar to corn syrup any day. Even the kids ate the cranberry sauce right up…my 1 year old even had a second helping! Just a word to the wise, don’t let the kids eat this too close to anything white that you don’t want stained. After dinner, I had to wash our white kitchen curtains (my 1 year old starts throwing his food when he is finished eating)…but those bright red spots did come right out in the laundry!
