Making cranberry sauce is easy

In addition to green beans, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing and giblet gravy, my Christmas table always includes homemade cranberry sauce. I’m always surprised when I hear people say that making cranberry sauce is difficult when in fact, it’s a breeze.

I don’t use a written recipe to make cranberry sauce – I just combine the ingredients from the photo above until I like what’s going on in the pan.

To start, I sauté onions in a bit of veggie oil.

Then I add star anise, minced ginger and the cranberries.

Next I stir in some sugar (usually about  2 cups for about 8 cups of cranberries will do since we don’t like our cranberry sauce super sweet).

Then I add a few splashes of red wine.

Once the mixture is boiling hard, I turn down the heat to medium-low and simmer it until the mixture is thickened and most of the berries have broken.

The last step is to add a spoonful of vanilla.

The entire process takes about 15 minutes. That’s it.

Will you be making or buying cranberry sauce this Christmas?