For me, canned cranberry sauce is the Jar Jar Binks of the Thanksgiving universe. Annoying and mostly unnecessary, it’s mostly there to entertain small children. It doesn’t have to be that way, folks. You don’t have to suffer through it, as Nancy Gerlach showed us with this serrano ginger cranberry chutney recipe she hipped us to in her Spiced-Up Thanksgiving Trimmings story.
Kicked-Up Cranberry Sauce: Cranberry, Apple, and Jalapeño United
If you’re like me, you probably get tired of the regular boring cranberry sauce that most people serve at holiday dinners. You know the stuff that I’m referring to — that gelatinous, mushy cranberry mold that your grandmother plated up every year for as long as you can remember. The flavor isn’t terribly bad, but I don’t understand why something that is as easy to make as homemade cranberry sauce is so often purchased off a grocery store shelf. When the canned version is served alongside a delicious spread of Thanksgiving goodies, I’m the first to overlook it and move on to the next offering. So this year I decided to try something new: since I’m a fan of spicy foods, I thought I’d add jalapeños to my otherwise fairly sweet homemade sauce and the results were delicious. If you prefer another type of pepper, feel free to use that one. You really can’t go wrong with this recipe!