Recipe: Apple Cranberry Relish
3 September 2019 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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gluten_freeEvery winter I make a double batch of this cranberry relish. Not only does it give turkey a reason to be eaten, it's also good with ham, pork, and chicken. I never used to like fruit on my meat before I made this stuff.
This is my recipe, but I mostly just wrote it down so I didn't have to keep interpolating between the two recipes I routinely mashed together every year. Because every year I looked at those two recipes—neither of which calls for apples—and was like, "Do I peel these apples??" Yeah, dummy, you do. But you—you, the reader!—don't have to! So consider this a loose set of suggestions. As written, it makes a thick and chunky cranberry sauce that's slightly sweet, with a bonus hit of orange, apple, and cinnamon that'll make your kitchen smell amazing.
APPROXIMATE INGREDIENTS:
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed
1 apple, peeled, cored, and diced
zest from one orange (about 1/2 Tablespoon)
1/4 cup orange juice
10 oz can mandarin oranges, drained
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
TIME: A while. Lots of chopping and zesting and juicing. But there are ways to speed that up. Doesn't require any special tools beyond a zester.
LIKE THE INGREDIENTS THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FUNGIBLE:
1. Throw everything into a medium-sized pot and warm it up on the stove on medium until bubbly, stirring occasionally, until satisfied. About ten minutes. Refrigerate or freeze.
More specifically:
1. Cranberries: I buy a huge bag of fresh cranberries at the appropriate time and freeze them so they don't get weird, and then I have cranberries all year long. This recipe works with fresh or frozen cranberries. Just rinse them and pick out any stems, leaves, or gravel. Throw out any gross-looking berries. You'll know them when you see them. They'll be all shriveled and squishy and sad. Or white.
2. Orange: You need one for the zest and the juice. Zest it first, then juice it. I throw the pulp in too. Sometimes I get my dad to supreme an orange for me in place of the canned mandarin segments, but if he's not around, I use the canned. If you have some of those tiny satsumas or easy peel tangerines (make sure they're seedless!), you can peel and use those, but I've found they add an extra level of bitterness because the skins slough off and hang around being all sour and tough.
3. Apples: Use whatever you like. I use what I have around—usually something sweet and crunchy like a Honeycrisp, but I've also used Granny Smiths, which are crunchy and tart—peel and core it, and dice smaller than the largest cranberries.
4. Cooking: Like I said, on medium heat until bubbly. Stir so it doesn't stick. How long you cook it depends on how chunky you want it, and how soft you want the apples. Go ahead and taste one. Do you like it? You're done. No? Keep going. After ten minutes, most of the cranberries have popped and the apples are still a bit toothy, which is how I like it.
5. Storage: After the sauce cools, it'll thicken up until it's a nice chunky relish. If it's too thick for you, just stir in a little extra orange or apple juice. It lasts for at least a week in the fridge, and has definitely been forgotten in the back of mine for two or three...months. It was still fine. Serve cold or room temperature.
Makes about three cups. This recipe doubles easily and stores well in the freezer.
Notes:
If you don't want to stand up a second longer, you can also throw this in the oven at 350°F and leave it in there for—my notes say two hours, but that sounds nuts; that might be for a double order—whatever, just give it a stir occasionally and take it out when it's done.
This recipe is a little work intensive with all the chopping and peeling and grating, especially if you make a double order. If you want to cut down on the erg expenditure, you could always leave the skins on the apples, use the canned mandarin oranges, orange juice from a jug (or from the mandarins if they're canned in juice), and dried orange zest from a jar—Penzeys sells some that rehydrates like magic.
And if you eat up all your ham or tofurky or whatever and have some cranberry sauce left, just slap on some streusel topping or granola, and slam it in the oven to warm up and you'll have dessert. Or you could dump it on top of a waffle or a pancake. Throw it on some yogurt. I have been known to eat it off a spoon. The stuff is tasty. A bit bitter, a bit sweet. A rich, dark red. Perfect for winter.
Variations: If you want a sweeter, brighter sauce, you can leave out the cinnamon and nutmeg.
Questions? Ask 'em!
This is my recipe, but I mostly just wrote it down so I didn't have to keep interpolating between the two recipes I routinely mashed together every year. Because every year I looked at those two recipes—neither of which calls for apples—and was like, "Do I peel these apples??" Yeah, dummy, you do. But you—you, the reader!—don't have to! So consider this a loose set of suggestions. As written, it makes a thick and chunky cranberry sauce that's slightly sweet, with a bonus hit of orange, apple, and cinnamon that'll make your kitchen smell amazing.
APPROXIMATE INGREDIENTS:
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed
1 apple, peeled, cored, and diced
zest from one orange (about 1/2 Tablespoon)
1/4 cup orange juice
10 oz can mandarin oranges, drained
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
TIME: A while. Lots of chopping and zesting and juicing. But there are ways to speed that up. Doesn't require any special tools beyond a zester.
LIKE THE INGREDIENTS THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE FUNGIBLE:
1. Throw everything into a medium-sized pot and warm it up on the stove on medium until bubbly, stirring occasionally, until satisfied. About ten minutes. Refrigerate or freeze.
More specifically:
1. Cranberries: I buy a huge bag of fresh cranberries at the appropriate time and freeze them so they don't get weird, and then I have cranberries all year long. This recipe works with fresh or frozen cranberries. Just rinse them and pick out any stems, leaves, or gravel. Throw out any gross-looking berries. You'll know them when you see them. They'll be all shriveled and squishy and sad. Or white.
2. Orange: You need one for the zest and the juice. Zest it first, then juice it. I throw the pulp in too. Sometimes I get my dad to supreme an orange for me in place of the canned mandarin segments, but if he's not around, I use the canned. If you have some of those tiny satsumas or easy peel tangerines (make sure they're seedless!), you can peel and use those, but I've found they add an extra level of bitterness because the skins slough off and hang around being all sour and tough.
3. Apples: Use whatever you like. I use what I have around—usually something sweet and crunchy like a Honeycrisp, but I've also used Granny Smiths, which are crunchy and tart—peel and core it, and dice smaller than the largest cranberries.
4. Cooking: Like I said, on medium heat until bubbly. Stir so it doesn't stick. How long you cook it depends on how chunky you want it, and how soft you want the apples. Go ahead and taste one. Do you like it? You're done. No? Keep going. After ten minutes, most of the cranberries have popped and the apples are still a bit toothy, which is how I like it.
5. Storage: After the sauce cools, it'll thicken up until it's a nice chunky relish. If it's too thick for you, just stir in a little extra orange or apple juice. It lasts for at least a week in the fridge, and has definitely been forgotten in the back of mine for two or three...months. It was still fine. Serve cold or room temperature.
Makes about three cups. This recipe doubles easily and stores well in the freezer.
Notes:
If you don't want to stand up a second longer, you can also throw this in the oven at 350°F and leave it in there for—my notes say two hours, but that sounds nuts; that might be for a double order—whatever, just give it a stir occasionally and take it out when it's done.
This recipe is a little work intensive with all the chopping and peeling and grating, especially if you make a double order. If you want to cut down on the erg expenditure, you could always leave the skins on the apples, use the canned mandarin oranges, orange juice from a jug (or from the mandarins if they're canned in juice), and dried orange zest from a jar—Penzeys sells some that rehydrates like magic.
And if you eat up all your ham or tofurky or whatever and have some cranberry sauce left, just slap on some streusel topping or granola, and slam it in the oven to warm up and you'll have dessert. Or you could dump it on top of a waffle or a pancake. Throw it on some yogurt. I have been known to eat it off a spoon. The stuff is tasty. A bit bitter, a bit sweet. A rich, dark red. Perfect for winter.
Variations: If you want a sweeter, brighter sauce, you can leave out the cinnamon and nutmeg.
Questions? Ask 'em!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 10:06 pm (UTC)I come from a cranberry-producing state!
Date: 2019-09-04 11:59 pm (UTC)I can testify it's magnificent on top of sticky rice made with coconut milk. Or ice cream, if we're going that far.
[1] thank you for new vocabulary
Re: I come from a cranberry-producing state!
Date: 2019-09-05 12:15 am (UTC)