Hi, I'm Becky from Lobel's. We're getting ready for Thanksgiving and while of
course was looking forward to a delicious roast turkey, there's a lot
more that goes into the Thanksgiving meal. We love preparing all the
traditional favorites, mashed potatoes, yams, apple and pumpkin pie, and stuffing
for the turkey. And as a sweet and tart counterpoint to the richness of the
turkey and gravy, cranberry sauce is a Thanksgiving must have. We offer some
wonderful cranberry sauce varieties in Lobel's Pantry at lobels.com, but you can
also make a delicious homemade sauce and it's a lot easier than you think. Plus if
you make your own, you can customize the sauce flavor to your liking. The basic
ingredients in cranberry sauce are water, cranberries, and sugar and you can leave
it at that if you want to keep things simple. Or add flavoring ingredients such
as ginger, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, or allspice, other fruits like currents,
pomegranate, citrus fruits, raspberries, or apples, dried fruits such as figs,
cherries, raisins, and apricots, are nice and so are nuts such as pecans or
walnuts. You can substitute a different liquid for the water such as chicken or
turkey stock and you can use other sweeteners such as agave syrup, brown
sugar, or honey. A well aged balsamic vinegar would make a nice addition too.
I'm going to show you how to make a basic orange cinnamon cranberry sauce.
We're going to add orange zest and some roughly chopped fresh orange segments
and we're also going to use some whole cinnamon sticks. I've assembled my ingredients here. We
have one cup of water, one cup of sugar a 12 ounce package of fresh cranberries,
the zest of one orange, roughly chopped orange segments, and whole cinnamon sticks. Before
you start, you'll need to wash and pick over your cranberries which we've
already done and I have them here. First combine the sugar and the water in your
saucepan and bring it to a boil. Once that's boiling add the cranberries. Let the water return to a boil then
reduce the heat and continue cooking for about 10 minutes. During this cooking
time the cranberries will start to pop open which will actually be able to hear.
This is very important in the process of the cranberry, sugar, and water becoming a
sauce. When the cranberries pop open their naturally occurring pectin is
released. If you've ever made homemade jam or jelly, you know that pectin is a
natural thickener found in plants and cranberries happen to be chock-full of
it. So in order to have your sauce come out the right consistency, you need to
make sure your cranberries have popped open. So ten minutes is a good estimate,
but more important be sure to listen and watch for that popping. Now the cranberries have popped open so
we'll add the oranges, zest, and cinnamon sticks. One chopped orange, zest, and I'm going to put in two cinnamon sticks. Just stir to combine and we'll let that
cook another minute or two to make sure that the flavors are really melding
together. Once your cranberry sauce is finished, you're going to want to let it
cool down and serve it chilled. For that reason cranberry sauce is a great
make-ahead dish for Thanksgiving. You can get it out of the way a day or two ahead
of time. Then the flavors of whatever you added in will definitely have plenty of
time to mix and mingle while it's chilling in the fridge. So here it is, our finished cranberry
sauce. I'll just spoon this into a nice serving dish and we'll pop this into the
fridge and once it's chilled it will be ready to serve alongside our roast
turkey. When you serve it, just be sure to pick
those whole cinnamon sticks out. We here at Lobel's hope you have a happy
Thanksgiving! Thank you for watching. If you'd like more tips, techniques, and
recipes, visit us online at lobels.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel or find
us on Facebook and Twitter.