It’s all pretty messed up when I think about it. My first few batches of cranberry sauce were just about as bad as the canned variety. The basic cranberry sauce recipe follows the same basic formula as this recipe, but the ingredients are limited to cranberries, water and white sugar. So it doesn’t come out of a can, and the berries themselves are detectable (as opposed to being a big jiggly heap of sweetenss), but aside from that, I can’t say it’s much better than the prepackaged stuff. Eventually I started tweaking the recipe, replacing the water with different fruit juices, adding different types of fruit, and throwing in different spices, flavorings, even nuts. It got better. Better enough for me to give up canned cranberry sauce. This year, since I’ve been on such an apple cider kick, I decided my cranberry sauce needed some, along with some apple chunks. The “spicy” part of this recipe is new as well. If you’re not into spicy, feel free to skip that part. I used a mild jalapeño and didn’t include the seeds (we’ve got palates of all spiciness preferences at our Thanksgiving table). If you want more spice in your sauce, use extra jalapeños and include the seeds (the spiciest part of the pepper).
