This little fish-shaped dish is my family’s cranberry sauce server. It is simply the perfect size for a can of cranberry jelly. I grew up with a clear glass one that my mom still has and a few years ago, when I found this milk glass version at a thrift store for $1.50, I snatched like it was the most valuable thing in the store. To me, it was.
The only wrinkle in this tradition is the fact that I gave up commercially made cranberry sauce a few years ago. I make so many preserves that it seemed silly to continue to buy this particular one. What’s more, most of the store bought stuff is made with high fructose corn syrup, a substance I try to avoid when possible.
So this year, I decided to do something a little silly in order to satisfy my desire to slide a can-shaped tube of cranberry sauce into my little fish dish. I made a batch from scratch and molded it into the can shape using BPA-free cans. I searched out a neutral-tasting food so that the cans wouldn’t impart any additional flavor to the jelly (these cannellini beans were perfect and tasted so good in a batch of sausage and kale soup). I also made sure to find a can that had a flat bottom, so that I could use a can opener on it in the event that the jelly was hesitant to exit the can.
I made a very basic cranberry jelly. Combine 5 cups whole cranberries with 3 cups granulated white sugar, 1 cup apple cider and the juice of 1 lemon in a medium saucepan. Place over medium-high heat and cook until the cranberries burst, stirring regularly. If it begins to look too thick, add a splash more water.
Fit a food mill with its finest screen. When cranberries are finished cooking, pour them into the bowl of the food mill and work them through. You could also use a fine mesh sieve and a rubber scraper if you don’t have a food mill. Continue to mill the cranberries until all that remains in the bowl of the food mill is seeds and skins.
Set a wide mouth funnel into your well-cleaned cans and scrape the warm cranberry sauce into the can, leaving a bit of space at the top.
Cover the filled cans with foil or plastic wrap and place them the fridge to set. If you can, give them at least 12 hours of chilling for optimum molding.
Just before you’re ready to serve, gather your equipment. Can of molded cranberry sauce. Butter knife. Can opener. And the all-important fish dish.
Carefully slide the butter knife down along the side of the cranberry jelly and run it in a complete circle to loosen. Take care when you to this so you don’t end up slicing all the can ridges off the jelly. They are part of the joy. Once the sauce has been loosened, invert the can into your dish and give it a little wiggle.
Sometimes the jelly begins to slide out immediately. If it remains stuck, use the can opener to crack the vacuum by beginning to take the bottom off the can. I’ve found that you don’t have to remove it all the way, even just a little bit of air in there helps move things along. Gently slide the cranberry sauce out onto your plate.
Serve with pride, knowing that you’ve managed to maintain a family tradition while sticking to your culinary guns. And, should you be curious, this cranberry jelly recipe is also appropriate for funneling into glass jars and processing in a boiling water bath canning. Ten minutes for pints and half pints will more than do.
![[Your name]'s gallery on Punk Domestics](http://www.punkdomestics.com/sites/default/files/badges/GalleryBadge200.gif)
Love it!!
love the milk glass fish!
My husband thinks this is the best thing he’s seen in a very long time.
The cranberry sauce sounds great and I love your fish dish! Happy Thanksgiving:@)
This is fantastic! I may just do this to fool some members of my family who ardently reject my home made cranberry sauce because it “doesn’t taste as good as canned”.
Ha ha! I hope they say how good the cranberry sauce is this year so you can tell them it was home made!
Very cool! I am going to make this. I will try using pectin instead of lemon juice (son is allergic). Thanks for sharing this recipe. Great pics!
Nanci, no need to add pectin. Cranberries are very high in it naturally. The lemon juice is just there for the flavor, not to aid in set.
Absolutely brilliant. Pulling the wool over at Thanksgiving… do you plan to tell guests before or after taking part? You have my thumbs (way) up as an RD!
Cheers,
*Heather*
Heather, because I’m not hosting this year, I think I’ll have to share the news that my cranberry sauce isn’t actually the canned kind. But I’m hoping that the “traditional” shape will encourage people who might not otherwise try a homemade sauce to take a nibble.
You rock my world! This very well may just make Thanksgiving for me!
You. are. a. genius.
That’s all.
xo
Aww, thanks lady!
So awesome! I, too, grew up with the stuff from a can, and miss the shape sometimes, because I avoid the canned stuff for the same reasons as you. Nice work!
This is so retrofabulous! Love!
This is great! While I didn’t grow up with the can shaped cranberry tradition, my husband did and he maintains it as something we need at Thanksgiving dinner. Now we can have the best of both worlds. Love it!
Love the milk glass fish! I have a large version and use it to hold fresh fruit on the kitchen table. Now I need a small one for cranberry sauce which, strangely enough, we eat all year with chicken, turkey, pork, and even beef. Homemade cranberry sauce, of course.
So freaking cool. And, and and: Love the fish plate. Of course it was the most valuable thing in the store!
Okay, is it pathetic that the first thing I did after reading this post was google “Milk glass fish dish”? Seriously…love it!
Also, you are brilliant. My mom makes a chunky cranberry relish for Thanksgiving, but I’ve never liked it…always preferred the taste and texture of the stuff from the can. But this looks like it has just the right texture. And I love the can idea.
If it helps, the little fish dish was made by Glasbake.
Don’t like whole cranberries in my sauce can I strain this for non chunky version? Thanks
This is a strained version. That’s what the food mill is for, it removes the skins and seeds and leaves you with a smooth product.
awesome!!
I love it! I tried my hand at cranberry sauce last year and canned it in wide mouth pints so that it would still slide out in one piece, but it was definitely missing the can ridges. To me and my siblings, cranberry sauce simply must have the can ridges to be “real” cranberry sauce.
So glad you posted this today! I always make the whole cranberry sauce but still buy a can of jellied for the “kids”(coming home from college). My store was out of organic jellied cranberry sauce so this recipe is a lifesaver. I have a traditional serving dish too – a fancy glass dish shaped like a pear that I bought for my mom when I was a little girl. It cost me 25 cents at the “little farm store” that a neighbor had down the road. Traditions mean a lot. Enjoy yours!
Love that, brilliant.
Best post EVER.
Love the idea so fun!
Funny that you did this because my father-in-law tells a story every Thanksgiving of his Mennonite mother would make her cranberry sauce the same way! LoL
OMG you just made my day. My family has this running joke about the cranberry sauce and how it’s the most amazing thing on the table because the chef spent all that time carving the ridges. And for the past few years we’ve just had two cranberry sauces – a good one and one out of the can, just so we don’t ruin the joke. I HAVE to do this now.
Marisa is absolutely brilliant! Love, love it. And, love the plate!
Thanks meg!
That’s fantastic! And a very sweet story about the fish dish – so glad you found your own
Thanks for posting this, I will be trying it.
Just curious, is there any use for the leftover skins/seeds or do you toss them?
I just tossed them. There’s not much leftover and texturally, they’re sort of challenging. However, you could always bake the into a quick bread if you can’t bear any waste.
Hilarious! This is great!
I am definitely going to try this…..my hubby only likes the stuff in a can………YUCK……..BUT even this can fool him!
Searching for food mills – what brand is yours? Couldn’t tell from the handle who’s the manufacturer…. would you recommend? TIA.
I don’t actually recommend my food mill. The first time I used it, all the little legs designed to prop it up on the bowl broke off. I’ve used the OXO food mill in the past and found it to be excellent.
This is just too cool. Thanks for the great idea!
how wonderfully whimsical!!!
I never thought to do this, brilliant! Love that you also found cans without BPA lining. I am also making my own sauce at my in-laws tomorrow, I think most of the family would be more comfortable with it “looking” like it came from a can!
Marisa — I thought about this the other day to fool everyone who turns their nose up at homemade cranberry sauce. I haven’t eaten canned since I’ve made my own. Now I am DEFINITELY doing it — gotta go fish some cans out of the recycle! Love your dish also. Have a nice Thanksgiving.
Love the recipe, but how many cans do you need for this recipe, didn’t see that anywhere.
Oops, sorry about that. It makes two cans.
Nanci: Those were my thoughts exactly!
Is this the same recipe (just larger) as your November ’09 post which you said wouldn’t set up firmly enough to unmold? Maybe the proportions are different? I hope so, because I want to serve this to my “healthy food” averse family. If it has ridges and can be sliced into rounds, my family will love it!
You know what, I was totally wrong about that ’09 jelly not setting up. I’ve since learned that cranberries have tons of pectin and almost always set up.
You are a genius
I don’t have my act together enough to do this this year, but I’m adding it to my list for next year! We never have canned sauce (my mom makes the greatest relish, my grandmother’s recipe) but my dad adores it. Next year, we’ll have both 
Thank you! I needed something to smile about!
This makes my kids and I (as a non-canberry eater) very, very happy.
Marisa, this is hilarious! I think you should wait until after dinner to tell. Love the fish dish!
So you know —
My family has a small farm and is one of Ocean Spray’s suppliers. I am showing them this post, as they will be HUGELY amused.
(We actually made our own relish from scratch, because if you can get the berries direct from your own bog, then…bonus.)
I love this so much! I make my own cranberry sauce and miss the can shape
This makes me so happy. Holidays are all about traditions — from specific dishes to meal presentations (can ridges on cranberry sauce included) — and finding a way to respect your own traditions within a modern lifestyle is so very, very excellent.
[...] cranberry sauce growing up, so I don’t have those great memories (and great plates!) like Marisa. She makes excellent points about all the reasons to skip traditional jellied cranberry sauce [...]
HA! Love this! I also love that milk glass fish! Fantastic!
Ha! This is awesome. Very funny and also very cool at the same time. I never thought about re-canning it.
Yes, I also have family folk who insist on canned cranberry sauce and this would do the trick. Thank you for sharing!
This is AWESOME! Thanks for sharing.
That’s a great idea! It’s a shame that i can’t find fresh cranberries in Italy
Brilliant, just brilliant! I am thankful my friends and family are very happy with my homemade cranberry sauce!
[...] out this ingenious solution from Food in Jars. She used empty BPA free cans as molds for homemade cranberry sauce. Looks just like the [...]
This is both insane and awesome. I definitely understand the appeal of the can rings, though. I used to measure my portion of the cranberry sauce by the number of rings.
Haha! Love this.
[...] Home Canned Cranberry Sauce – Use this recipe and these instructions to make your homemade cranberry sauce look like the store bought canned stuff. One way to get people to eat homemade. lol You can eat it without going through the canning process. [...]
Do you suppose you could do this with dried cranberries when you can’t get fresh? Does drying them affect the pectin, do you think?
Hope this isn’t a dupe — dropped my connection in mid-post.
Just made it! Didn’t have any cans to use, but poured into a jelly jar glass, a pint jar and a half pint jar. We’ll see what happens! What I tasted was AWESOMELY DELICIOUS! I cannot wait to put this on the table tomorrow!!! Thanks Marisa! You never fail me! Have a happy Thanksgiving!!!
Thank you! Made this tonight and it tastes great plus I love the tin can molding idea; you’re so clever
Happy Thanksgiving!
My brother has made fun of my Thanksgiving food choices for 10 years now. I’ve been a vegetarian all that time, and only last year found a turkey substitute that he thought was worth eating. (Field Roast’s Celebration Roast, in case you were wondering.) He scoffed at the idea of my bothering to make my own cranberry sauce, as we all like the canned stuff. After a taste this evening as I was cleaning up? “Not bad.” High praise indeed.
Lol, one of the first preserves I foisted on my husband was a homemade cranberry sauce. The whole berry ones didn’t past muster, but he is happy enough to eat a jellied of any shape so long as its just berries and sugar and water/juice.
Which makes more for me, and I’ve made 4 recipes alone to test out which I like best. Canned for sharing with others.
I’m listening for my last ‘ping’ for some 1/4 pints of cranberry orange marmaladeish stuff – I noticed that I was a little heavy handed on the sugar and it was setting up this morning after I cooked it, so after I dished up for the table (a cut glass oval dish in our family), I set the rest of the pan aside in the fridge. Just heated everything up again and did five little jars of thanksgiving yumminess as I was setting up the crock pot for turkey stock.
I’ll have to try the more “jelly” like version next year – I can totally see doing this presentation just to mess with the family.
Ha! So mine didn’t set (was just barely jiggly so I poured into a pretty glass serving bowl) but it still turned out great because the two ten-year old boys at our table were crazy for it. In fact, after dipping one forkful of turkey after another into it, they called it “turkey blood”! Lots of laughs — and for me, the reminder that a recipe doesn’t have to turn out perfectly to be appreciated. Thanks for the laughs, both for your fish dish and the turkey blood!
This made the best cranberry sauce I’ve ever made, and went straight into the favorite recipes folder! THANK YOU!
That is simply adorable. How whimsical and wonderful!
[...] also tried to make homemade canned cranberry sauce with the ridges and everything, like G.’s childhood. But we reduced it WAY too much and [...]
I love that you made it in a can! I did homemade jellied cranberry sauce a few years back but used mini jello molds. Cute but I missed the can ripples.
I did this for Thanksgiving. I made mine without apple cider and added in some ginger root… but same idea. Passed it through the food mill. Poured it in a can that used to hold white beans. Brought it to a feast.
It was AMAZING. Delicious, easy to slice for sandwiches, a conversation starter… Just perfect. Thanks for the idea!
[...] soon as I saw Marisa, from Food in Jars, post about making her own homemade cranberry side with a well-known canned look, I knew I’d be in love with the whole post. I’m happy to [...]
Total genius. And I LOVE the fish plate!
Sadly, my mom forgot to add sugar to the cranberry sauce this year. That didn’t work out too well.
SWEET! I was wondering if I could make my own cranberry sauce instead of buying the kind with the corn syrup! I can’t wait to give this a try. If only I had found it before Thanksgiving!
Silly me! I read the title as, “Home canned cranberry sauce, made in a tin, can mold.” Silly, silly me.
Looks great though!
I used a wide mouth mason jar, but this is way more awesome! Thanks!
Perfect. My husband would think I had bought it.