This Whole Instant Pot cranberry apple sauce with rosemary recipe is a year in the making. Last year, I rounded up my favorite Whole30 Thanksgiving recipes, feeling positive you could do a full round in November without feeling deprived at all. After all, the most important things on the Thanksgiving table (at least in my opinion)–turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce–are all easy to make Whole30 compliant. Er, well, all except that cranberry sauce. Almost everything I found was preferably sweetened to some degree, and I was nervous that the recipe would otherwise be too tart. So all year, I mulled over the very best way to bring cranberry sauce to the Whole30 Thanksgiving table without losing out on that balance of natural sweetness and tartness, with the full flavor provided by my signature addition of fresh rosemary to every cranberry dish that comes my way. Because, as you know, cranberries are hella tart. Like, you don’t think they’ll be that bad, right? You think, oh, they’ll be a little sour. Just a little sour. Except my dog tried a rogue berry that had escaped my homemade cranberry garland one time, and she spit it out. My dog spit it out. My dog spit it out. That’s some next-level tartness right there. But I simply love it when it’s balanced with a bit of sweetness! I always spoon a few blobs of the whole berry stuff into the center of my plate on Thanksgiving, happy for the fuschia mixture to tint my turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and rolls, to infuse them with a bit of extra brightness. So it occurred to me one day: why not a cranberry applesauce with rosemary? Not a revolutionary concept by any means, but if we could balance the sweetness and volume of the apples with the brightness of the cranberries, not losing any of the tartness or vibrant berry flavor, and infusing it all with fresh rosemary? That right there, that could work. And best of all, it’s made in the Instant Pot! In quite literally 5 minutes. Does it get any easier? Spoiler alert: No. Not it doesn’t. You could absolutely substitute a stick of cinnamon for the rosemary here, but I absolutely love the woodsiness next to the apples and cranberries. I wrote a love letter to my rosemary applesauce years back, and this is just that perfect pairing elevated and simplified even further. The maple syrup is fantastic if you’re not on a Whole30, but it’s not necessary at all.
