Welcome to The Apéritif! Recipe Tuesday is a bi-monthly seasonal vegan recipe published every other Tuesday evening.
Is it too early for Christmas recipes? If so, my get-out card is that it is also US Thanksgiving this week and cranberry sauce is a feature of that meal too.
Whenever I have the time, I love making as many of the Christmas dinner items myself from scratch. The sauces and sides are often the first things to go to store-bought when you’re pushed for time, which I completely understand, but a fresh homemade cranberry sauce or bread sauce is just so much better than a storebought option!
But I should say that I’m fortunate that in my immediate family we all help with preparing and clearing away the meal - that’s part of the fun, cooking it together while we sip champagne - and I recognise that the ability to divide the work and delegate tasks is partly why I have the scope to make more things from scratch. I feel for anyone who’s expected to produce a huge meal without much help, because that must be miserable.
If I’m really organised, the 23rd is the ideal sauce + stuffing prep day. That leaves the 24th for the vegan main to be prepared and all the veg and potatoes to be peeled and chopped.
An obvious question might be why I like cranberry sauce if I don’t eat turkey, which it is traditionally designed to accompany - the answer is I just love the sharpness and freshness of it, and it goes nicely with the rest of the meal and the mushroom wellington that is my go-to vegan main. And since I’ve not convinced my family to go turkey-free yet, they like the sauce for their meat too. I think it’s also just the tradition element - the same goes for bread sauce, which is the strangest concept and 25 December is the only day I eat it, but the plate just feels a little incomplete without it somehow.
If there’s any sauce leftover, I actually just like eating it with yoghurt, like a berry compôte, which is basically what it is. But of course it can also be eaten with all the leftovers that hang around for several days after Christmas, too.
Ingredients
300g fresh cranberries
125ml fresh orange juice, i.e. squeezed by hand from fresh oranges (you could also use store-bought orange juice, but the flavour is so much better with fresh!)
75ml pure maple syrup
Method
Add the three ingredients to a sauce pan and bring to the boil. Once boiling, turn down to a low simmer and maintain it there, stirring frequently, until the cranberries are softened and it’s kind of a loose jammy consistency - around 10 minutes. You can start smashing the cranberries a bit with a wooden spoon as they soften, too. Keep in mind that the sauce will thicken as it cools so it’s fine that it’s still a bit runny at this stage - you don’t wan to overcook it.
Taste and see if it’s too your liking - I like this amount of syrup because I like the sauce tart and sharp, but you can always stir in an additional spoonful of maple syrup or brown sugar without significantly impacting the consistency if you want it sweeter.
Transfer to a storage container and leave to cool, then cover and transfer to the fridge until the time comes to use it. It keeps for about a week in the fridge if well covered.