Cranberry Orange Sauce
Bright, tangy, and perfectly festive, this cranberry orange sauce tastes like the freshest flavors of the holidays got distilled into a single spoonful. It's quick to make, gorgeously ruby-red, and guaranteed to steal a little spotlight from the turkey.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Cranberry Orange Sauce
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 20 minutes
- 🍊 Flavor Profile: A well-rounded Thanksgiving side dish with the best flavors of the holiday season: sweet, tart, with a kiss of orange and holiday spice.
- 🦃 Good For: Serving with turkey or chicken, slathering on sandwiches (the best ever is this sauce + leftover dry brine turkey + an easy yeast roll = heaven).
- 🔄 Make Ahead: It actually gets better after some time in the fridge, so make it up to two days ahead of time!
- 🧡 Difficulty: If you can boil ingredients and stir, you can make this cranberry orange sauce.
Summarize and Save this Recipe Using:
🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya friend: One of the key components of any Thanksgiving dinner is a good cranberry sauce. Sure, you can use canned sauce in a pinch, but this cranberry orange sauce recipe is so simple, and it's worlds above the canned stuff in terms of flavor. Whether you're serving a big crowd or making Thanksgiving dinner for two, you've got to try making homemade cranberry orange sauce!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Time saver: I love that I can make this sauce days ahead of time, freeing up my kitchen time to work on other parts of Thanksgiving dinner, like the homemade turkey gravy and my sugar cream pie recipe.
- Turkey's favorite sidekick: Whether you are making a full dry brine turkey recipe, a smaller Instant Pot turkey breast, or even a little Thanksgiving meal for two, this cranberry orange sauce will make your turkey shine.
- As easy as opening a can: This recipe is as easy as boiling a pot of water...but with way tastier results.
🍊 The Ingredients You Need
- Cranberries: The star of the show, the tart to the sauce's sweet. Both fresh or frozen (I usually opt for fresh), but steer clear of dried berries as they don't have the juices needed to make homemade cranberry sauce.
- Orange zest and orange juice: The bright citrus flavor really platforms the tart cranberry and lets the flavors shine.
- Cinnamon and nutmeg: Cozy warmth that whispers "holidays."
- Salt: You want your sauce to be a little tart and a little sweet. A pinch of salt will pull everything into harmony.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Spice swap: If you don't have ground cinnamon, you could also toss a cinnamon stick in with your cranberry sauce. Pull it out before serving for a more rustic touch.
- Cranberry and apple sauce: Want a chunkier, softer, less tart cranberry sauce? Make my cranberry applesauce instead.
- Long-term love: For a larger batch cranberry sauce that will get you through the winter, you can also make my canned cranberry sauce. Break out a jar whenever you are craving a little sweet-tart flavor with your turkey, roasted chicken, or other dinners.
- Is it cake?: Love this flavor combo? Then you have to try my cranberry orange Christmas cake!
🥣 Cranberry Orange Sauce How-To
Step 1: Nothing fancy here-just toss all the ingredients directly in a saucepan. But just wait...with just two more steps, you'll end up with a holiday-worthy sauce.
Step 2: Heat over medium-low heat. The cranberries will start to pop open as they cook-it's music to a chef's ears.
Step 3: It'll take roughly 20 minutes of cooking time for your sauce to be finished. When it's done, most of the cranberries in the pot should have popped open. The sauce will also be thicker than it was when you started...but pull it off the heat before it gets to your desired thickness. It will continue to thicken as it cools!
🙋🏻♀️ Cranberry Orange Sauce FAQs
You should store leftover cranberry orange sauce in the fridge in an airtight container for up to two weeks, or freeze for up to two months. And pro tip: my all-time favorite sandwich is my dry brine turkey recipe with some of this cranberry sauce on a roll! You must try it!
The main alarm I get from readers when it comes to cranberry sauce: a too-thick sauce. The culprit? Overcooking! As the cranberries simmer, they break down, releasing a natural thickener called pectin. The goal is to have most of your cranberries burst, but maybe not all of them. The longer the sauce cooks for, the thicker it gets. Since cranberry sauce continues thickening as it cools, a sauce that's too thick in the pan will be way too thick once it's chilled. If this happens to you, stir in a little more orange juice to thin it out a bit.
Want to save this recipe?
I'll email this recipe to you, so you can come back to it later!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- A sauce for Goldilocks: Not too thin, not too thick...that's the "just right" cranberry orange sauce. Remember that the pectin in the cranberries gels together as it cools off, creating a thicker sauce. This is why it's so important to remove your cranberry orange sauce from the stove before it looks "perfect."
- Don't overzest: When zesting your orange, stop before you get to the white pith. You want the flavorful oils in the top of the peel, not the bitterness located in the pith.
- Make it early: I recommend making your fresh cranberry sauce a day or two ahead of the rest of the holiday meal. This will allow the sauce to gel up the refrigerator as it cools. It also means less hands-on cooking on Thanksgiving, which is a plus in any busy cook's life.
🦃 More Great Thanksgiving Recipes:
If you tried this cranberry orange sauce or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Cranberry Orange Sauce
Ingredients
- 12 ounces fresh cranberries
- 1 cup orange juice
- ½ cup honey
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients for the Cranberry Sauce in a medium sized saucepan.
- Heat over medium-low heat until the cranberries pop and the sauce looks thickened, about 20 minutes.
- Transfer to a serving bowl and chill until ready to serve.
Notes
- Remember that cranberry sauce will continue to thicken as it cools, so you'll want to pull it off the heat before every single cranberry has popped and before it gets quite to the consistency you want.
- Be careful to avoid the white pith when zesting your orange, as it will make your sauce bitter.
This is the exact cranberry sauce recipe I make each year for turkey day! It's perfect served with fresh roasted turkey, but even better slathered onto a turkey sandwich for lunch the next day. Enjoy!