Now, some of you might be saying, “Mariel are you crazy?! I love canned cranberry sauce and it is a Thanksgiving staple.” And I hear you. Canned cranberry sauces is sweet, predictable, and tastes pretty good. But let me give you four reasons to consider making it yourself.

1. It’s super easy to make. With this recipe, even the most inexperienced cook can bring something delicious to the holiday table. And it stores well too, so you can make it days ahead of time.

2. The numbers don’t lie. This recipe is both inexpensive and makes a lot. One bag of fresh cranberries about $2 and a can is about $1.50. And, one 12oz bag of fresh cranberries will make about 2.5 cups of sauce (about 20 oz), while a can is usually 14oz. You’re getting up to 6 oz more of cranberry goodness for just 50¢.

3. Three ingredients. All pronounceable, all familiar.

4. The “awe factor.” You’ll bring it to your holiday feast and people will be all, “wow you made that,” and they don’t have to know that it took you less than 15 minutes. Making your own cranberry sauce, you can feel proud that you stepped Thanksgiving up a notch. BOOM.

Seriously, I love this recipe. I made it on Sunday and have just been eating it straight from the bowl with a spoon. I take it to work as a lunchtime side dish. Ryan has has about 2 spoonfuls and I’ve probably eaten the rest.  I like to think this is how I’m getting my daily servings of fruit.

But, if you still absolutely need your can, and you think this is the most ridiculous, blasphemous post ever – please stick with me just a bit longer. At the bottom of the recipe I have a few variations that might satisfy those of you who prefer smooth and canned cranberry sauce.

Adapted from how my mom told me to make this (and also the back of the Ocean Spray bag)

Ingredients:

1 cup of water

1 cup of sugar

1 12oz bag of fresh (or frozen) cranberries

Directions:

1. Rinse cranberries.

I used frozen berries

2. Put the water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Heat on high and bring it to a boil. As that water is heating up, I stir occasionally to help the sugar dissolve.

3. Once the water is boiling, add the cranberries. When the water has come back to a roiling boil, then lower the heat to medium-low.

4. Simmer the cranberries for 10 minutes, or until the water becomes thick and red. This simmering part is THE BEST. The cranberries hiss, sizzle, and pop open. Their skins burst and their sweet-tart juice ooze out.

5. Remove from heat and let cool a bit. Store in the refrigerator. The sauce will thicken a bit more as it cools.

Variation #1 – For a citrus twist on an old favorite add up to 1/2 cup of orange juice in with the water and sugar. Follow the directions as above. At the end, stir in zest from 1 orange.

Variation #2 – Prefer smooth sauce? Follow the recipe above. Once it’s cool enough to touch, pour the sauce into a fine mesh sieve or colander. Place that over a bowl. Using a metal spoon or your hands, press the sauce through the sieve. Keep pressing until all that’s left in your sieve are the seeds and skins. In your bowl you’ll have smooth sauce.

Variation #3 – Absolutely need the can shape? Find how you can do it here, from Food 52.

Messy Level – Just one spoon. The only time I made a mess was when I’d sneak the container out from the fridge and then eat giant spoonfuls over the counter. There was spilling. It was delicious, so I couldn’t be neat as I scarfed it down.

The post Whole Cranberry Sauce appeared first on Cooking is Messy.

And then I tried a roasted acorn squash stuffed with rice and lentils. It came out under cooked and under seasoned. That was probably a recipe that with a little tweaking I could get right, but I was still disappointed.

But one meal worth writing about was my lunch on Monday. I had off for Columbus day and my friends Ashley and Mala came over. We had a pretty fancy lunch despite some lazy hostessing on my part. And by lazy hostessing, I mean that 75% of the dining table was covered with a puzzle of Abraham Lincoln that I’m working on, and I also made them use paper plates. In spite of that, lunch actually turned out quite nice and now I wish I had taken more pictures.

We started out with a cheese plate. Ashley brought apple-cinnamon covered goat cheese. I had never had goat cheese coated in anything but herbs, so it was cool to try. We also had Gruyere and cheddar, which I served on my fancy cheese platter with the fancy cheese knives.

For our lunch we had a salad (that Ashley made), pici pasta, and homemade tomato sauce. Ashley’s salad was a great combination of sweet, from the fruits, and a sharp saltiness, from the blue cheese. The pear she used was a little soft, which was actually really nice because it soaked up the dressing. And the addition of pecans made for a nice crunch.

The recipes for the pici and tomato sauce I adapted from the Amateur Gourmet. We were all skeptical of how well the pasta would come out and we were delighted that it actually tasted like pasta. We did have some issues with shaping the pasta. The Amateur Gourmet said to shape the pasta, put it on a plate, and toss it with flour before putting the pasta into boiling water. We did that, but we must not have used enough flour because all the pasta stuck together and Mala and I ended up ripping the heap of dough apart and throwing in random sized pieces into the water. The three of us agreed it would have been easier to bring the water to a boil, then shape the pasta, then immediately throw it in the water so the shape would be less weird. Because of the random shaping, some of the fatter pieces were heavy and reminded me of gnocchi. But, if you roll thinner pieces it really tastes just like pasta. Though in the end, I think we were all impressed that we made homemade pasta for lunch.

The pasta sauce was my favorite part. I learned about it from the Amateur Gourmet, but the original author is Marcella Hazan. This recipe is SO EASY and SO DELICIOUS. I really don’t think I’m overselling it. There’s this pasta restaurant that Ryan and I love called Pasta Mia. The pasta there is so good that we always overeat because we want to soak up as much of the good flavor as possible. The first time I made this recipe I thought, “this smells like Pasta Mia.” But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to influence Ryan. Then he took a bite and said, “this is like Pasta Mia.” So if Pasta Mia means anything to you, then you’ll know this sauce is good. If Pasta Mia means nothing to you, sorry. You should still try it because it’s so simple and comforting and tasty.

Anyway, today’s post has three recipes and I hope you enjoy!

Ashley’s Salad–

Ingredients:

(Portion amounts based on your taste preferences)

arugula

sweet and spicy pecans

crumbled blue cheese

1 pear, sliced

dried cranberries

balsamic vinaigrette

Directions: 

1. Mix arugula, pecans, cheese, pear, and cranberries in a large bowl.

2. Dress with balsamic vinaigrette. Serve!

Tomato Sauce –

Ingredients:

1 28oz can of whole peeled tomatoes

5 tbsp butter

1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half.

Directions:

1. Empty the can of tomatoes into a pot. Use a knife and roughly cut up the tomatoes. Don’t get crazy with this, just cut the tomatoes in halves or quarters.

2. Add the butter and onion halves. Turn on the heat to medium and bring to a simmer.

3. Once it’s simmering, lower the heat. Let it simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally and use your spoon to smash and crush the tomatoes.

4. After 45 minutes, discard the onion.

5. Serve.

Pici Pasta –

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 large egg, beaten (Mala beat the egg first, then we measured out half)

1 cup water, room temperature

Directions:

1. In a large bowl mix together flour and salt.

2. Add the water and egg. Knead until smooth. (Amateur Gourmet says about 5 minutes)

3. Flatten it and rub it with olive oil. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes.

4. While you’re waiting for the dough, bring  a large pot of water to boil.

5. Generously flour your work surface and hands. Roll out the dough. Cut the dough into desired pieces. (I cut the dough into chunks and then rolled out snakes).

6. Drop the pasta snakes into the boiling water.

7. Boil for 3-4 minutes.  You want the pasta to be cooked through but not raw.

8. Drain, top with sauce. Serve!

Messy level: The salad and tomato sauces are easy 1-2 spoon recipes. The pici though is a 4-spoon recipe. You have to stick you hands in and knead the dough and it get really sticky and caked into your finger nails. Also you have to flour your work surface and roll everything out. It takes a bit of work and makes quite a bit of mess. All this mess is the reason I was  a lazy hostess and opted for paper plates.

The post Pici Pasta, Tomato Sauce, and Salad appeared first on Cooking is Messy.

I found this recipe for orange cranberry muffins on food.com, but I decided to take a risk and change it a bit. First, I used dried cranberries instead of fresh. Second, I decided to put in some fresh orange bits in the muffin. I got this idea from a blood orange cake recipe I made once from Smitten Kitchen. I liked the warm and juiciness of the cooked oranges so I thought I’d try it. But, I was nervous because baking is a science and I was wondering if the juice from the orange ruining the muffin. It all worked out well and it tastes good, so yay for experimenting! I only put in about 3/4 of an orange, because I kept eating pieces, so I think a full orange could work.

Anyway, making this recipe is pretty easy and it’s so quick! The only prep work is chopping the cranberries and zesting the orange. I realized that my mandoline slicer has a grating blade, which makes it so easy to zest! Also, for as much as I bake, flour is NOT my friend. Every time I use flour it gets all over everything in my kitchen, as evidenced by the picture below which shows flour all over the sink and the pots and pains that were drying.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup dried cranberries, roughly chopped (I used orange flavored ones)

1 egg

3/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon orange zest

1 orange, chopped into tiny pieces

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°

2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda

3. In a small bowl beat egg, orange juice, oil, and zest

4. Add cranberries and liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients

5. Stir until just moistened

6. Put mixture into greased muffin cups (or use paper liners). Fill about 3/4 full

7. Bake 15-20 minutes until browned on top

Messy Level: I’ll give this two spoons because I find it hard to neatly get the batter into the muffin pans. Also, because of flour. I always get flour everywhere.

The post Orange Cranberry Muffin appeared first on Cooking is Messy.