Cranberry Orange Relish
Instead of posting “Cooking” on Thursday this week, I”m putting out this recipe in time for you to get the ingredients together and make this side dish. Besides, you already have my grandma’s chopped apple cake recipe and stovetop dressing in the box takes about 2 minutes to fix, but add some chopped onion to it to bump it up a notch.
Yes, I am goofing off.
I love this dish, because while it can be bought at the store if you’re in a hurry, it is very easy to make from scratch. Fresh cranberries are everywhere now, and if you want to use them to decorate your Christmas/holiday tree, you just string them with a darning needle threaded with heavy duty sewing thread, available at a fabric shop. You can also string popcorn with the cranberries or just put it on its own strings.
When the holidays are over, put the strings of cranberries and popcorn outside for the birds and squirrels, or take the stuff off the strings and put the berries and stale popcorn in spots where you know the critters will pick them up. Make the squirrels happy.
This 2004 version comes from myrecipes.com:
1/2 cup orange marmalade
2 tablespoons grated orange rind (zest is the more up-to-date term)
1 cup fresh orange juice (about 2 oranges)
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (to taste)
1 (12-ounce) package fresh cranberries
Combine marmalade and orange zest, and set aside.
Combine juice and sugar in a medium saucepan; bring to a boil. Add cranberries; return to boil. Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes or until cranberries pop and sauce begins to thicken. Remove from heat; stir in marmalade mixture.
Cover and chill in front of a TV while watching Macy’s parade or the ‘Frosty the Snowman’ cartoon.
N.B.: Instead of ‘grated orange rind’, the more up to date version is orange zest, which is the color part of orange peel. If you don’t have a microplane to produce orange peel zest, a kitchen grater is fine. Just do not take the grater deep into the white part of the peel. The orange part is where the flavor is, about 1/16 inch thick. If you make orange juice from the oranges, then throw the pulp into this, also.
And have a pleasant and Happy Thanksgiving.
Category: Economy
Stovetop dressing in a box? On Thanksgiving?
I’ve got an old school meat grinder to make the one thing my mom cooked that I absolutely loved…stuffing…I liked it so much I’d buy double the required ingredients for my mom and she’d cook a separate baking dish of the stuff…real sausage and Bell’s seasoning and stuffing bread….and a host of other small seasonings that make the whole house smell wonderful…
To this day I can take a slab of stuffing from a baking dish slice it into half inch thick layers and make a stuffing sandwich with lettuce and mayo and cranberry that transports me back decades to my youth…
Hondo’s post about music uniting us with our memories of loved ones is spot on, but food often does exactly the same thing…at least for me it does…
In any event I hope everyone is able to enjoy their Thanksgiving tomorrow with the company of family and friends, a tradition we’ve started at my house is everyone is welcome to bring that one person from their work or life that has nowhere to go to our house and share our day with music and food and conversation over some adult beverages. Everyone should be part of someone’s family, if only for a moment.
Enjoy your holiday!
We LIVE for happy squirrels! 😉
Mom would make a bog berry sauce very similar to this every year, and we all thought it was some mysterious and involved recipe. It’s really quite easy, and once you make it you’ll never get the canned stuff again when fresh berries are available.
Only thing I would add to this is a pinch of salt to really make the flavors pop.
Thanks, Ex!
Never cared for cranberries till I came up with this recipe.
Sea Dragon’s Cranberry Sauce
12 oz bag cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp grated orange peel
Juice of one naval orange
1/3 cup brandy
2 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 4 tsp water
Rinse cranberries and place in a saucepan with 1/3 cup water, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and orange peel.
Bring to a boil and add orange juice. Simmer till softened.
Add brandy and cornstarch mixture. Simmer 5 minutes.
Cool and serve.
I grew up eating the log in a can. At this point in my life, the cranberry jello just doesn’t hack it. I don’t think I’ve ever served that to *my* kids.
I’ve always made this, like the recipe here, fresh, albeit without the marmalade and they will outright eat it in a bowl with a spoon.
I’m going to be by myself tomorrow, (no biggie), and you can BET I’m making this and maybe a little Ham and taters or something, I’ll swing by the store this evening late and shop.
Oh and stuffing with half a can of heated gravy in a bowl is a meal too. I’m such a bad influence, one evening I made the kids dinner, a bowl of stuffing with chopped meat and gravy and here’s a spoon, go at it.
Sometimes it’s the simple things.
Thank you all. I will be making a chicken and dressing dish, keeping it real simple this year.
The reason I mentioned boxed dressing is that it’s quick and easy to fix if you run out, and you can add whatever extra flavors you want to it. It does save some time that could be devoted to watching a football game, but it also acts as a backup in case you run out of your homemade version.
Nice recipe Ex. My friend and his Daughter are taking me out to Poppy’S Deli tommoro for my big 73 B Day which is Friday. I can’t resist this but ORANGE you glad I made this comment.
I was just teasing you Ex….I eat the boxed stuff during the year myself and toss some extra goodies (meat and spices) into it and it’s just fine like that..
Tomorrow though I go full on old school with the stuffing…
We do a “dressing” as opposed to a stuffing. I get the Pepperidge Farm bag stuff with sage. Dump in a buttered baking dish, add some whacked up onion and celery, and chicken broth. Dried cherries put it over the top. Dot the top with butter and into the oven per instructions. Easy and very good.
For all you dressing/stuffing lovers, here’s something to try with the leftovers: Heat up a waffle iron. Slice up some dressing and plop it into the waffle iron. When heated and crispy, load up with whatever suits your fancy.
A stuffing waffle makes an excellent sandwich, or a base for other reheated left overs.
We have mixed up dressing and made waffles with it instead of either stuffing a turkey or baking it. You get crispy all over instead of folks fighting for the edges.
Turkey with popcorn stuffing:
Procure 1 ea. Turkey, 12-16 lbs. Remove giblets and neck. Thoroughly rinse bird, to include cavity.
Generous rub turkey with unsalted butter, season with salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning.
Place 2 cups unpopped popping corn in cavity. Gently place turkey in a preheated 350 dry oven. Cook until Corn Pops and blows the ass off the turkey.
Bonus points for blowing the door off the oven.
Bring large container of cooking oil to 375 degrees F. Place frozen turkey into container. Run.
I’m saving that for Christmas.
We used to deep fry a turkey at the fire station, in the bay, after we pulled the truck out. But we usually thawed them first and of course we had a fire extinguisher or two near by. 😉
See my recipe for leftover turkey in the Open Thread post. You will like this stuff. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Sure wish somebody had told me that there was a plastic bag of stuff inside the bird BEFORE I stuck it in the oven the first time I tried to cook a turkey. It was shocking. The birds Mom got didn’t have such things. A farmer not far from our house delivered one the evening before Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve ready for the oven. Had no idea you had to inspect the innards!