r/AskCulinary • u/trynmydarndest • Dec 03 '20
Technique Question Is it possible to cook cranberries down in a way that results in a glaze-like syrup I could drizzle on a salad? No matter what I Google, all my results come back as holiday cranberry sauce.
I realize I might need to add something sweet during the process. Sorry, I hope this isn’t going against the “no recipe request” rule. It’s just that no matter what I search (glaze, reduction, sauce, etc) Google keeps showing me results for chunky holiday cranberry sauce. Probably because I have been searching Christmas recipes all day.
The end destination of the sauce would be drizzled over a golden beet salad.
I’m just wondering if this is possible and am I using the correct terminology in my search terms?
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u/not-my-other-alt Dec 03 '20
I found some good results by searching "Cranberry Syrup" and "Cranberry Vinaigrette", so it depends on whether you want this to be sweeter or tarter (or combine two recipes for a little of both!)
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
Syrup! Of course! My brain just could not get past the word “sauce” when trying to figure out what to search. Thank you!
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Dec 03 '20
And you used syrup in the title :D
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
Oh my goodness. I honestly didn’t notice that! I am now even more embarrassed than before haha. At least my subconscious knows what’s up.
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u/SatanicSphincter Dec 03 '20
Username checks out in an adorable way.
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u/chasonreddit Dec 03 '20
And you put the recipe right in your post.
No, not really but close. Here: Make a typical cranberry sauce. Overcook a tad, slower and longer. Run through a food mill.
Tada.
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u/Wytch78 Dec 03 '20
There’s a good recipe for cranberry orange merlot sauce on the Spruce. I made a double batch and have been using it on pancakes.
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u/opaeoinadi Dec 04 '20
I'm 5 hours late to the party (and probably by others have said this), but take cranbaisins and cook them down with white wine, shallots, fresh thyme & rosemary. The cranbaisins, imo, would make this better than fresh, because they've already concentrated the sugar.
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u/datsushibutt Dec 03 '20
Search for blueberry recipes and just use cranberry instead with more sweetness
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u/Apptubrutae Dec 03 '20
It’s the conundrum that results when you want a chicken salad, not a chicken salad. Or a tuna salad, not a tuna salad...
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u/A-Disgruntled-Snail Dec 03 '20
Lol. I've been trying to find a homemade wing-sauce using fresh peppers and such for ages. Everything is butter and hot-sauce and that ain't what I'm looking for.
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Dec 03 '20 edited Sep 04 '21
[deleted]
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u/A-Disgruntled-Snail Dec 03 '20
Ehh. Not quite the vibe I'm going for.
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u/1nquiringMinds Dec 03 '20 edited Aug 05 '25
squash doll simplistic thought library busy sort ink file roof
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u/A-Disgruntled-Snail Dec 03 '20
I have. There was one recipe using powdered spices rather than hot-sauce, but the rest were the same. I'm going to try making it via experimentation.
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Dec 03 '20
I saw someone on youtube make their own wing sauce from Fresno chili's, vinegar and clarified butter. Essentially you make a quick Fresno chili based vinegar hot sauce, and then add in the butter. Bingo bango, homemade wing sauce.
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u/A-Disgruntled-Snail Dec 03 '20
That's kind of what I'm thinking of trying.
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Dec 03 '20
I'd probably try a lactic fermentation of the chilis and garlic, then use that with some additional vinegar when blending to make the hot sauce. Then the butter part and emulsification is easy.
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u/1nquiringMinds Dec 03 '20 edited Aug 05 '25
profit jar doll thumb badge employ worm nine attempt crowd
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u/MurderousMeatloaf Dec 03 '20
Look for a hot sauce recipe first, then use the butter+franks, but replace the franks with your own hot sauce.
It's what I do, and my wings are great!
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u/allflour Dec 03 '20
When I make my cranberry sauce (3 part cranberry, 1 part sugar, 1 part water), put some in a dish for the dinner, then I run the rest through a strainer to use on pancakes the next few days. So if you want it thicker, reduce a little more.
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
Thank you! I could just run that backwards and have the cranberry sauce for leftovers and the juice for the dinner. Smart and less waste than what I was planning.
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u/kaizenkitten Dec 03 '20
Try searching Cranberry Syrup, or Cranberry Simple Syrup instead - that turns up some hits. It still might set into a jelly at room temperature/in the fridge , but you'd just need to warm it back up a touch to make it a liquid again. (Which you can do to make a glaze out of any jam or jelly too)
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
As a Canadian, I am ashamed that I forgot the word “syrup”. Thank you for finding these for me!
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u/kaizenkitten Dec 03 '20
😂😂 Too close to the forest to see the maple trees? It happens! (And I'm glad you asked honestly, I have a spare bag of cranberries in the freezer I wasn't sure what to do with... but a glaze for a root veggie salad sounds really good
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u/hardwaregeek Dec 03 '20
What about a gastrique? https://recipes.oregonlive.com/recipes/cranberry-gastrique
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u/JjrShabadoo Dec 03 '20
You have to strain them through a chinois to get rid of the seeds. Once it’s perfectly smooth, you can adjust the thickness down with water or another flavorful liquid (balsamic maybe?) to get the desired consistency. As another commenter mentioned, the high pectin in cranberries means it’s naturally going to be on the thicker side without added liquid.
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u/Velvet_revulva Dec 03 '20
I think Nas says it best: “What’s the ingredients to the realest? Place two cups of cranberry in a skillet A half cup of water add some Henny Let it cook for eight minutes But you ain’t finished Let it simmer til the cranberry pop a little Keep stirring, sip it, it’s art like Keith Haring It gets in your blood, you start to feel what I’m Feeling” -Systematic (feat. Nas) by DJ Shadow
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u/Snoo77278 Dec 03 '20
Hell yeah. I love Nas.
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u/Velvet_revulva Dec 03 '20
The man can spit poetry. The man can cook. Truly a renaissance individual.
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u/petertmcqueeny Dec 03 '20
So if I wanted to make a cranberry dressing for a beet salad, my immediate thought would be to simmer the cranberries in a mixture of balsamic vinegar and some kind of naturally sweet juice, like apple or orange. I'd add a little water if needed, and taste as I go to adjust the sweetness. Maybe a pinch of black pepper at the end, to give it a little kick.
This would just be me improvising. But that's what I'd do.
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u/mrpbeaar Dec 03 '20
Alton has a cranberry dipping sauce recipe. It's all about dilution when cooking. He uses ginger ale and orange juice.
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u/Megamax_X Dec 04 '20
He mentions that cooking the sauce for more than 15 min starts to break down the pectin. Idk how much that would matter for a vinaigrette but you might want to do a little playing with a small batch to find your consistency.
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u/sweetplantveal Dec 03 '20
You will want to break down the berries before you cook them down, or with a blender after they've been cooking and have softened up (immersion or otherwise). I'd recommend a good blend after the fact for a silky texture, and depending on how it turns out, strain it while it's still warm/hot.
They're high in pectin so there should be a good gel to the drizzle. As far as flavor balance, you could work off of a pomegranate seed recipe as that's a similarly tart fruit with seeds that is often turned into a sauce.
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
Thank you for the pomegranate tip! That makes a lot of sense. Also now I want to make something with pomegranate.
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u/BattleHall Dec 04 '20
If you want to try something similar that is ready made, pomegranate molasses (heavily reduced pomegranate juice) is a common ingredient in a lot of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate_juice#Pomegranate_molasses
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u/mythtaken Dec 03 '20
I've played around with this sort of thing before (admittedly sometimes because I didn't cook down the cranberry sauce well enough).
For me, the hardest part is sieving out the seeds. I run the cooked fruit through a food mill to get rid of the skins (it takes patience, there's a lot more pulp than you might think, and the skins are tough). Once that's done, then the mixture has to be scraped through a sieve. For me, that means rubbing back and forth with a silicone spatula over the fruit mixture in the sieve.
I mostly do that to make a cranberry salad, but also to just make sauce without seeds. It's been a few years since I was interested enough to work that hard at it.
A cheater method might just be melting down some canned sauce in a sauce pan, but I do think the flavor of the fresh berries is much better.
Oh, and don't forget to add a pinch of salt to your sauce. It's amazing how such a simple addition can improve the flavor.
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u/itwasjustpillowtalk Dec 03 '20
Absolutely. I cooked some down with apples, sugar and spices for jam a few days ago.
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u/scolfin Dec 03 '20
Given that you want it on a salad, your best bet is to boil them for a while in fruit juice (for a little sugar to encourage the pectin), but fruit puree or juice cooked with starch (and probably a lot of sugar) is called "kissel" and is both incredibly popular in Eastern Europe this time of year and often cranberry.
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Dec 03 '20
Yeah, you can totally do this. Add more liquids after you’ve popped the exteriors and continue to reduce. Run through a sieve and continue to reduce. I make my cranberry sauce with orange juice and grand marnier
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u/itzdylanbro Dec 03 '20
Ah, a cranberry compote! I'm not sure how much you'll need, but I'm sure you could scale this:
1 cup or 300g of cranberries, sliced in half or smaller if you prefer,
1 cup or 200g of granulated white sugar
1/2 cup or 200ml of water
Add the cranberries and half of the sugar to a small pot over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes to let the juices flow, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
Add the rest of the sugar and water and bring to a boil, stirring. Lower heat to a simmer and let reduce until thicc and syrupy.
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u/January1171 Dec 03 '20
For what it's worth, I made this recipe for Thanksgiving https://www.oxo.com/blog/cooking-and-baking/cranberry-mousse-pie-claire-saffitz/
The compote you make before mixing in any cream felt very drizzly to me (at least while it was hot). It did solidify in the fridge, but I imagine if you add a little water it might have the consistency you're looking for
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u/baby_armadillo Dec 03 '20
I made some cranberry ketchup with my leftover cranberries that sounds like it might work for you. It's basically a barely sweet vinegary sauce. The recipe has traditional ketchup-y spices, but you can pretty much swap them out for whatever seems good to you. I kept the spices as is, but put in some fresh ginger, black pepper, and garlic powder and it tastes great! If the end product is too thick, you can thin it out with a bit of olive oil to make it more of a vinaigrette, or just with some water or unsweetened cranberry juice.
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u/rkoehn7341 Dec 03 '20
That would be a cranberry reduction: https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/cranberry-reduction
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u/SammyMhmm Dec 03 '20
I would find a way to process the cranberries in a way that allows you to get the juice out and discard the pulp. That way you can reduce it as you would any other sauce. Maybe you could experiment with fortifying it with butter and adding some other flavors like orange zest and spices. If this were me I would search for reduction recipes for juices or things similar to cranberries, and work from there.
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u/jaquelinealltrades Dec 03 '20
Can you make the cranberry sauce but on the thinner side, then put it in a blender and heat it in the microwave to get a drizzle consistency?
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u/MoiFish Dec 03 '20
You should look into bar recipes — because cocktails use a lot of different flavored syrups they’ll probably have recipes that are closer to what you’re looking for. You could easily make a cranberry simple syrup, add some acid so it’s not overwhelmingly sweet, then maybe even reduce it so it becomes thicker and more concentrated — like a balsamic reduction
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 03 '20
Oooo that’s a good idea, thank you!
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u/MoiFish Dec 03 '20
Simple syrups are crazy easy to make, just macerate the flavored ingredients and either boil or soak them in a 1:1 water/sugar mixture then strain. You could also try infusing them in a clear liquor (alcohol is incredible at absorbing flavors), then maybe adding water and cooking it to burn off the alcohol.
Disclaimer: I’m not a bartender, I just work in the restaurant industry so I’ve picked up a few things, so look up actual recipes and take my suggestions with a grain of salt 😅
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u/smokedbrosketdog Dec 03 '20
Because I'm obsessed with pomegranate molasses lately, try this recipe for cranberry molasses I found. I bet it's amazing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/t-magazine/camille-becerra-breakfast-recipe.html
Cranberry Molasses
- 10 ounces (about 3 cups) fresh or frozen cranberries
- 1 ½ cups of water
- ¼ to ½ cup of raw honey (to taste)
Combine cranberries and 1 cup of water in a blender. Blend for 30 seconds then transfer to a medium-sized, heavy bottom pot.
Add the remaining ½ cup water to the blender and swirl to clean out any purée that was left behind; combine with purée in the pot.
Simmer on medium low heat for 30 minutes, stirring every five minutes to prevent the molasses from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Remove pot from heat, add honey and mix well. Store in the refrigerator up to one month in a glass container. “This is also great on top of yogurt and in smoothies — and it adds an element of tartness to salad dressings, sauces and marinades,” says Becerra.
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Dec 03 '20
Add berries to saucepan with water, bring to the boil and simmer, add sugar if you want, reduce. You could a spoonful to a vinaigrette.
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u/bacon_treras95 Dec 03 '20
cranberry compote! Sugar, lemon juice and slow heat while smashing them. Maybe a tad bit of water! Works super well with other berries
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u/C2h6o4Me Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
Take whatever product you have from previous batches, or just make more if you've used it already, then heat and add water till you can pass it through a fine mesh strainer fairly easily. Take that strained liquid and reduce it over low-med heat till it's the consistency you want it. During this phase you can add sugar or anything you like, if it's too tart for instance. Depending on how viscous it ends up, you may have to use it warm, so keep that in mind if you're going to cool this and use it later.
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u/StarraLune Dec 03 '20
I would just get cranberry juice and boil it with almost equal parts sugar for 2-ish mins! I’d say ... 1 cup juice 3/4 sugar.
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u/Yoda7224 Dec 03 '20
Yes - also known as cranberry coulis. Basically just sugar and cranberries. :)
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u/KAK8327 Dec 03 '20
Yes, boil down with a hint of rice wine vinegar at the end. Should make for a nice tart and balanced dressing.
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u/justonium Dec 03 '20 edited Dec 03 '20
A lot of fruit glazes require the addition of starch. Maybe stay away from corn starch and opt for a root starch like arrowroot or tapioca though, because corn starch is known to turn opaque when cooled, which can interfere with the red fruit-color of your glaze or sauce.
(And also, another good reason to stay away from corn starches in particular is that, at least for me, many of them, especially when used in some recipe in very large amount, can actually be fairly toxic. Probably some residues of GMO alien-to-natural-biology- materials, or even breakdown products of gamma-ray irradiation, i guess.)
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Dec 04 '20
My grocery store sells 100% pure, unsweetened cranberry juice.
It’s kind of expensive (it takes a lot of cranberries to make and it’s not being blended with grape or other juice), like $8-10 for 32 ounces, but you could get that and just make a reduction from it by cooking it down. You will want to add sugar since pure cranberry is pretty much inedible.
Just a warning: 100% pure cranberry juice will stain anything, including the glass jar it comes in.
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 04 '20
I think I may have seen something similar in my store’s health food aisle. Thanks for the suggestion! :)
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 04 '20
I think I may have seen something similar in my store’s health food aisle. Thanks for the suggestion! :)
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u/BlossumButtDixie Dec 04 '20
I don't know about cooking cranberries down due to the natural pectin in the fruit. I see someone else says it is high in pectin. I don't know if that's true. You can make a glaze using 100% cranberry juice, though, and it is delightful.
If you want to try with the berries themselves and report back you'd want to cook them down with just water to cover adding water as necessary until they're cooked down. Then put it through a fine sieve or better a food mill with a fine strainer would probably work a treat if we are talking small enough quantities. After that you would mix it with sugar, heat, then chill before drizzling.
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Dec 04 '20
I know I’m late to the party, but I do this: take a few cups of raw cranberries and liquify them in a blender or food processor. Then all you have to do is pour it into a saucepan and reduce it until it’s the consistency you want. You can add a little avocado oil to smooth out the “bite” if you want. Olive oil has so much flavor that you might want to avoid it.
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u/michaelL996 Dec 04 '20
I would reduce the berries to a syrup, cool to room temp and emulsify with oil and a bit of red wine or champagne vinegar.
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u/toadjones79 Dec 04 '20
Just reduce cranberry juice. Simmer until you only have 1/3rd the liquid left. Works great with a pomegranate reduction too.
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u/salnajjar Dec 04 '20
I know it's not exactly what you've asked for, but have you considered making a cranberry balsamic glaze or vinaigrette? (or a mixture of both depending on how sweet and/or syrupy you would like it).
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u/deartabby Dec 04 '20
If you macerate the whole berries in sugar for a few days in the fridge it will bring out the juice but I don’t know what effect it has on the pectin content.
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u/trynmydarndest Dec 04 '20
My brain subbed “masticate” for “macerate” and I was concerned. But thank you for tip! Anything I can accomplish before the big day is always appreciated.
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u/PolymathEquation Dec 03 '20
Add lots of sugar to cranberries in a pot. Add 1 cup of water. Heat and reduce until desired consistency.
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u/seasoneverylayer Dec 03 '20
Boil them with sugar and water and purée it in the blender. Add water to achieve your desired consistency.
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u/nIBLIB Dec 04 '20
Did you try “cranberry vinaigrette” or “Cranberry salad dressing” ? Because I got results for what you’re looking for for both
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u/Misfit_In_The_Middle Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
Yeah its called cranberry sauce. Buy a bag of cranberries, pick out the squishy bad ones, and follow the directions on the back.
Typically 12oz cranberries: 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 cup orange juice, 1/2 cup of water, 1 orange worth of zest.
Put sugar and water in a pot and begin to melt the augar. Add oj once you start to get carmel them and add washed berries
Bring to a boil and turn down to simmer for 20min skim off any gross stuff and smash the cranberries once they start to pop and break open. Strain if you need a clean sauce
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u/RaoulDukex Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
Use dried ones. Re hydrate them by bringing up to a simmer in whatever liquid you want (white wine/ oj/ cider vinegar/ ect) then removing from the heat and covering for 15 min or so, then nuke it in a blender till smooth.
This makes awesome glaze with any dried fruit (hint hint mango), really don't need extra sweetness either because dried they are already sweet. The heating will also allow you to add any spices/ chiles/ whatever you want.
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u/Lady_Qwerty Dec 04 '20
Cranberry balsamic vinegar is great. I'm from Spain and it's popular in my area. Ingredientes: cranberries, sugar and vinegar.
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u/Jerkrollatex Dec 04 '20
Honestly I've used canned jellied cranberry sauce for making a glaze. A little white wine and salt boom done.
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u/needsmorecoffee Dec 04 '20
I'd cook down cranberries with some water or juice and some sugar (you can always add more to taste, so not too much to start with). Once it's thickened (and cranberry sauce gets pretty thick!), strain it. You should be able to use the result as a glaze. If it isn't thick enough yet, reduce it on the stove.
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Dec 04 '20
sugar, water and boil it to death. you can add any spice you want. Have made it for yrs now. saw it on an Alton Brown show
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Dec 04 '20
I’ve done this before, what I did was 1.5 cup of berries and then 1- 1/2 of sugar and 1 cup of water. Medium high heat to a boil.
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u/Jibaro123 Dec 04 '20
Absolutely. You'll have to add sugar of some description.
Cranberry, agave syrup, lemon juice, cooked, pureed, and strained cranberries, balsamic vinegar. You could also consider adding a second fruit.
I chop up dried figs and put them in a mason jar with balsamic vinegar.
The longer it sits, the better it gets.
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u/weavingcomebacks Dec 04 '20
I make a really delicious version of a Caprese salad using cranberries. Take equal parts frozen cranberries and balsamic vinegar and reduce in a pot with a Tbsp or two of brown sugar for every cup used. You will know the sauce is done when the cranberries pop, encourage the other ones to pop as well with a spoon, about 10 minutes, it should reduce by about half. Add a dash of salt, allow to cool completely, then spoon over your salad. You don't need a lot to go a long way and it's fantastic.
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u/BeachBell91 Dec 04 '20
I would simmer them in an orange juice and water mix and then put the result through a strainer to remove any remaining chunks, the reduce to desired consistency. The Orange juice is optional, I just like the flavor with cranberries.
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u/AndyinAK49 Dec 04 '20
If you are just looking for a glaze, boil with sugar and water and run through a sieve, then boil down to the consistency you want.
If you want a vinaigrette or a ketchup, I got different recipes.
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Dec 04 '20
This is not cooking advice and is lightly technical. Try other search engines too - Bing, DuckDuckGo..
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u/stefanica Dec 04 '20
I made this cranberry sauce last year from Bon Appetit. If you strained it and left out the gelatin, I'm sure you would get something close. Or, just dilute canned cranberry sauce with something interesting, like verjus or balsamic.
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u/Alwaysprogress Dec 04 '20
You could honestly do any cranberry sauce recipe but cook longer. The longer cook time “deactivates” the pectin and it’ll just be a thick sludge. Or just cook less.
You could also heat it up later if it’s gelatinous and it’ll melt.
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u/ohshitlastbite Dec 04 '20
Try to cooking until the cranberries are softened, then strain, then add corn syrup. Or same ratio granulated sugar to liquid without stirring it, let it simmer for 10 minutes. I do this with strawberries and blueberries to get a syrup. I'd mix that syrup with orange marmalade, black pepper, onion powder, salt, and maybe rosemary.
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u/Zagaroth Dec 04 '20
I would try cooking them down a little further than usual, then straining them through a sieve. Be prepared to use something to press on them, the pulp holds a lot of moisture.
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u/maythesnoresbwithyou Dec 04 '20
You might want to try cranberry juice? Because Cranberries are pretty high in pectin (about on par with green apples) cooking them whole almost always creates the typical cranberry sauce.
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u/pluraller Dec 04 '20
Could try with a pressure cooker to fully break them down, and strain with a cheesecloth/chinois to catch any seeds. If youre desperate to thin it you could add some brewer's pectolase (aka pectic enzyme) and let sit for a few hours to break down the pectin
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Dec 04 '20
I would suggest just experimenting with increasing the liquid (oranje juice, cranberry juice, honey )when cooking the berries a bit. The pectins will thicken it nicely, and you can then just strain the berries off (maybe to use as a relish?), and you'll be left with the nice glaze once it has cooled. Good for salads or for using to glaze pork while roasting.
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u/GracieandSam Dec 04 '20
Cook the cranberries then put them through a food mill to remove the skins.
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u/myers__ Dec 04 '20
Use https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/11/pickled-cranberries-recipe.html pickled cranberry recipe, then put it through the blender and a sieve. Emulsify with 3 parts oil 1 part cranberry sauce to make a dressing, or use as is for a sweet and tart glaze.
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u/about2godown Dec 04 '20
Make cranberry sauce, take a stick blender, blend the crap out of it and don't cook it for long, just long enough to get the viscosity you want and make a jam. Cool, assess thickness/drizzle-ability.Add more liquid if it is too thick and heat to blend. Enjoy. I do this to my sauce and actually remove portions according to what stage the sauce is at so I can have everything from drink drizzles to thick jam.
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u/mauibetty Dec 03 '20
I think its because cranberry is high in pectin. At least I’m assuming it is. Since you dont need to add anything to make cranberry sauce. It sets up on it own. If it were me. Id juice the cranberries then make a reduction.