A holiday feast is just not the same without pretty cranberry sauce to brighten the table. Canned cranberry sauce can’t compare taste-wise or nutrition-wise to homemade, but the downside is that most cranberry sauce recipes use A LOT of sugar.
This recipe gives you the health-promoting benefits of the vitamin C and antioxidants found in cranberries and oranges, plus the boost of cinnamon, without the harm caused by processed white sugar.
Healthy Cranberry Sauce with Orange & Cinnamon
Yield: 2 cups
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
• 12 oz bag of cranberries, fresh or frozen (if frozen, allow to thaw first)
• 1⁄2 cup raw honey or maple syrup
• 1 medium cinnamon stick
• Juice and zest of 1 med-large orange
• 1 cup of water OR enough water to make 1 cup of liquid (see step 3 below)
Directions:
- Rinse the cranberries well and discard any mushy ones.
- Wash the orange and use a grater to zest the orange.
- Juice the orange and add enough water to equal 1 cup of liquid OR for even more vitamin C and fiber, grind up the orange in a blender or food processor and add enough water to equal 1 cup of liquid.
- Place all ingredients in a saucepan on the stove and heat at med-high heat until the mixture comes to a full boil.
- Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for approximately 10 minutes until the cranberries pop and the mixture thickens. Stir occasionally so the mixture doesn’t stick. Cook longer if you want your cranberry sauce thicker. Add more water if you like it thinner.
- Remove from heat and allow to cool at room temperature before placing in the fridge in a covered container. Cranberry sauce can be made several days ahead of time and keeps well for at least a week in the fridge.
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Editor’s Note: This recipe was initially published in 2017 and has been updated in December 2023.
I make mine with ONLY organic cranberries and organic whole oranges. Grind them up. I add no sweetener since the whole orange sweetens it. Perhaps had several organic sweet pickles. It has a bite to it, not so sickly sweet as most cranberry sauces, and healthy raw like this. For cinnamon, I add a drop or two of Young Living Cinnamon Bark Essential Oil…to taste.
Charlene, it seems like a good recipe. I am making cranberry sauce for Christmas this Sunday, but I tend to use one cup of sugar and one cup of water, because this is the way that my father wants to eat the cranberry sauce. I might try your cranberry sauce your way one day. I never use cranberry sauce from a can, because there is too much artificial flavoring that I do not like.
I can never copy and paste your recipe “cards”. I’d like to keep them in my documents on my PC. Can you fix this?
Terry, I copied and pasted this cranberry sauce recipe under Notes in my IPad.
My documents in my word processor is how I keep all my recipes organized and at hand. I can highlight, copy and paste all of the article but not the image that condenses all of the recipe ingredients and instructions. I can do this on every other website but this one. ???
If you’re running Windows 10, search for Snipping Tool, it’s a desktop app. I use it all the time. Just click new, highlight area, or picture, you want and save it to desktop or anywhere.
Thanks!
Why would you add raw honey with all of the other ingredients then bring it to a full boil? By boiling it, you would be killing all of the beneficial nutrients. It makes more sense to add it at the end after it has cooled.
Great idea!