Basic Cranberry Sauce

Too many cooks give up at the end of a Thanksgiving meal and resort to canned cranberry sauce. That’s a shame. It’s surprisingly easy to create a simple cranberry sauce that looks and tastes nothing like the canned version. Here’s what we discovered:The standard back-of-the-bag recipe is a little soupy. Cranberries contain a lot of water, and cutting down on the additional liquid yields the ideal consistency.

If you can’t find fresh cranberries, frozen will work equally well, but you’ll need to increase the cooking time slightly. You want most of the berries to burst as the sauce simmers. But don’t leave it on the stove for too long or you’ll be left with a mushy red mash. 

Fresh and frozen cranberries work equally well. If you are using frozen, add one to two minutes to the cooking time.