These cranberry recipes are a great way to jazz up your holiday season. From traditional with a healthy spin to new and different, this list of recipes has cranberry goodness to last the season through.
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Fresh Cranberry Recipes
It’s a great time to hit the refresh button on your cranberry recipes. With holiday get togethers and seasonal meals on the to-do list, make your life easy with these new and improved recipes.
Cranberry sauce has always been one of my favorite holiday dishes, which has led me to find creative ways to enjoy them all season long!
Are Cranberries Healthy?
I personally love my cranberries on the tart side and I also love to remake old holiday favorite dishes with a healthier spin. Cranberries have tons of health benefits, so grab them while they’re hot (or cold)!
These beautiful winter berries are high in antioxidants and are anti-inflammatory. Well known for the lowering the risk of UTI infections, cranberries also contribute to good gut bacteria.
12 New and Improved Cranberry Recipes
Whether you want the healthiest cranberry recipe possible, or a whole new way to jazz up your cranberry sauce, these 12 recipes are perfect to add to your holiday cranberry rotation.
Cranberry Sauce & Relish
A Thanksgiving favorite, cranberry sauce graces tables from turkey day throughout the holiday season. There are often stark opinions on whether sweet, tart, jellied, or whole cranberry sauce is preferred.
All I know is, you can never eat too much cranberry sauce! (I’m in the tart-whole-berry camp, by the way.)
For a traditional feel, sauce made with whole cranberries is the best way to go. My personal favorite is this super simple spiced cranberry sauce recipe.
With flavors of orange and ginger along with whole spices, it really captures the flavors of my childhood, but with a healthier spin. Best part? It’s quick and easy to make!
Another very simple and super tasty take on traditional cranberry sauce is this apple cranberry sauce. All it requires is a little chopping and simmering with spices. The apple adds a delicious seasonal flavor to this whole berry sauce.
Cranberry relish is popular among those who really like a tart side dish with their Thanksgiving turkeys, and differs from traditional cranberry sauce in that it uses all raw ingredients and is served uncooked.
This tart and sweet cranberry relish recipe is a tasty ode to fresh cranberries with delicious flavors of orange, apple, and cinnamon. It whips up easy in a food processor and is perfect paired with a holiday turkey or ham for those in the “tart” cranberry camp!
To really jazz up cranberry sauce, try this sweet and spicy cranberry chutney! It has complex flavors with simple ingredients including cranberries and green chilis.
This cranberry chutney recipe only takes around 20 minutes to make, and there are some great ideas for additions too, like dried figs or fresh pears. Yum!
Fermented Cranberry Recipes
Quite possibly the healthiest way to consume cranberries, fermented cranberries put a whole new delicious spin on a holiday table. Cranberries already have health benefits, and fermenting them adds a probiotic punch that we could all use during a big meal!
A great recipe to start with are these lacto-fermented cranberries in brine. It uses almost the same ingredients as you’d use in cranberry sauce, except you ferment them! They turn out gorgeous and delicious, and are perfect for a holiday meal.
With an amazing tart and sweet flavor, this simple fermented cranberry sauce is a great way to help with digestion of a big holiday meal. This sauce is easy to make and there is no cooking required! This recipe gives good ideas for long-term storage too, so it can last all season long.
Using raw honey is a super easy and really delicious way to ferment. Try this recipe for fermented honey cranberries, it won’t disappoint! This process is so simple, it hardly needs a recipe.
With just a few ingredients including cranberries, ginger, a cinnamon stick, and raw honey, all you have to do is give it time. These tasty morsels can be eaten as is, or ground in a food processor into more of a sauce.
As you plan your holiday ferments, definitely don’t leave out this fermented cranberry salsa! It uses delicious fresh ingredients, and goes just as well on your holiday plate as it does on top of leftover turkey tacos.
Preserving Cranberries
In my generation, it was very common to have canned cranberry sauce at the Thanksgiving table – with the can lines still in the jellied cranberries.
While that was delicious to me at the time, I’ve come a long way when it comes to eating preserved cranberries. Now I preserve my own and the taste is so much better.
By making canned cranberry sauce at home, you’ll have access to shelf stable tasty cranberries whenever the mood strikes this season. Canned cranberries are easy to make, and even easier to bring as a side dish to a party!
This recipe for canning cranberries can be made two ways, whole berry or jellied. Cranberries for all opinions!
If the feeling arises that you want delicious cranberry taste on just about everything, well, you’re not alone. This maple cranberry butter is the spreadable delight necessary for such times!
This cranberry butter is sweet and tart with a beautiful cranberry color. It’s perfectly spreadable, slather-able, scoop-able, and delectable. Eat it on everything!
For an unmatchable tart, sweet, and sour flavor at once, make these super easy quick pickled cranberries. These are a unique treat, and probably one of the easiest ways to preserve cranberries.
The most dependable way to preserve whole cranberries is by canning them. This method saves freezer space, and makes a delicious cranberry juice or syrup at the same time!
There are several canning methods that work for whole cranberries, and this recipe walks you through all of them. Then you have whole cranberries to use when needed!
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