Over the weekend, I made a batch of pickled cranberries for my Serious Eats In a Pickle column. I figured it was a fun, seasonal pickle and a good one to feature in the days before Thanksgiving. What I didn’t anticipate was that it would rocket so quickly to the top of my favorite preserve list.

I made these on Sunday night and I’ve eaten them in one way or another everyday since. On Sunday, I realized that they were nothing so much as a chunky shrub (or drinking vinegar) and stirred them into a bit of sparkling water for a fancy “cocktail” to go with dinner (though I love a good, boozy drink, I have a teeny, tiny tolerance and so often skip the intoxicants).

On Monday, I whisked some of the cranberries into some olive oil and drizzled it over a mess of arugula and goat cheese and topped the whole thing with a big of not-very-sweet granola for some crunch. That’s the salad you see above. It was refreshing, filling and perfectly seasoned. I think it’s my new house vinaigrette.

Yesterday, I made little stacks of baguette, clothbound cheddar and pickled cranberries, for a sweet, savory, astringent snack. I’ve not eaten them yet today, but we have so many hours to go before bed. I’m sure I’ll work them in somehow. Tomorrow, they’re going on turkey.

If you still have time before Thanksgiving and want to sneak more more condiment on to the to-do list, I do recommend this one. However, even if you can’t imagine the idea of cramming even another thing into your pre-holiday plans, I still think you should make these pickled cranberries once turkey day has passed. They are my new favorite thing and I think they just might become yours as well.

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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.

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Long before I was putting food in jars on a regular basis, I was making a little online cooking show called Fork You. One of the first episodes Scott and I (long before the idea that we’d ever marry each other was even a glimmer of a possibility) made was in the fall of 2006, where we outlined my father’s sure-fire, no-fail method for making large amounts of turkey gravy.

Essentially, a day or two before your holiday meal, you toast a couple of cups of flour in a dry frying pan over medium low heat until it’s a dark and nutty. It takes anywhere between 30-45 minutes, depending on the size of your pan and the amount of flour you’re toasting. As it heats, you keep the flour moving around the pan, to prevent burning (run your exhaust fan as you toast, and don’t walk away, it goes from perfectly toasted to burnt in an instant).

The day of your meal, when you’re putting your turkey in the oven, you start a pot of turkey broth, using the neck/giblets/trimmings and some veggie scraps. When it’s time to make gravy, you make a roux (this isn’t a true roux, but it’s close) with a few tablespoons of the toasted flour (sift after toasting) and some turkey drippings and slowly expand it with the broth, additional toasted flour and whatever turkey drippings you can spare. The amount of gravy you make depends almost entirely upon how much broth you make and how much flour you toast (you may not end up using all the flour you toast, but it’s always better to toast too much as opposed to not enough, because when you’re making gravy, there’s rarely time to stop and toast more flour).

For those of you who need a visual understanding of how to do what I’ve just described, here’s the video we made lo those many years ago.

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As some of you may know, before I started this blog, I spent a lot of my time writing about food for Slashfood. Over the two years I was there, I amassed a fairly significant collection of holiday recipes and I thought it would be fun, as we prepare to head into the Thanksgiving frenzy, to point out some of my favorites. Even if most these recipes don’t actually include many (or even any) foods in jars.

• Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts (particularly good for Thanksgiving, because they don’t require any valuable oven real estate)
• Napa Cabbage Gratin (creamy, tender cabbage under a crisp, brown crust)
• Roasted Pumpkin and Creamed Kale Lasagna (makes a really good main dish if you don’t do turkey)
• My cousin Jeremy’s Gingered Squash Puree (next time I make this, I’m going to try the tip Fran left in the comments of the pumpkin post and try draining the squash overnight before cooking with it. I think it will solve this dish’s only problem which is a tendency to be a little bit watery).
• The Potato and Pumpkin Bake (you must make this)
• Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Leeks and Cream (designed to be kid friendly, it’s plain delicious)
• Vanilla Orange Sweet Potato Puree (I also use the juice of the orange when making this dish. It’s now become a family tradition)
• Whole Wheat Cranberry Bread (I’ve been making this recipe since I was seven years old, although, in the beginning, it wasn’t whole wheat)

In addition to those Slashfood recipes, there’s also the classic Fork You Thanksgiving series, in which we made:

• A brined turkey in the Orion cooker
• Mashed potatoes and gingery peas and carrots
• Yumpkins (aka pumpkin cheesecake)!
• And a turkey pot shepard’s pie, as a way to use up all those leftovers

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It’s pretty much universally accepted that no Thanksgiving spread is complete without a cranberry condiment of some sort. My grandma Bunny was partial to a raw cranberry-orange relish she made with hand-cranked countertop grinder (I do wish I had her recipe, but both she and it have been gone since I was 15). My cousin Angie makes the same cranberry jello mold that her mother always used to make. My own mother has always been a secret fan of the standard canned stuff, not necessarily announcing her preference to people outside the family, but always ensuring that it appeared on any holiday table at which she ate.

In recent years, as I became enamored with the idea of making myself what I once mindlessly bought, I experimented with varieties of homemade cranberry sauce. I made whole berry compotes with fresh vanilla bean. I did an apple-cranberry sauce. I even tried that cranberry jello mold. As delicious as they all were, none were quite right.

That is, until I determined to make a very simple cranberry sauce, using just fresh berries, a splash of apple cider and sugar. Essentially, I resisted the urge to fancy it up. After cooking, a pass through a food mill and a rest in the fridge overnight, I realized I had made something nearly identical to my mom’s favorite canned sauce, only without the high fructose corn syrup.

So, if you like the classic canned jelly, but have a burning desire to make your own, this is the recipe for you. Best of all, you can put it through a hot water process and make it shelf stable, making it a do-ahead Thanksgiving project (and it’s good on more than just turkey, it was delicious on the french toast you see above). The only downside I can see is that it won’t exist its vessel whole and retain the shape of the can.

The recipe is after the jump…

Homemade Cranberry Jelly

1 pound whole cranberries, washed and picked over for any bad berries
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup apple cider
lemon juice (optional)

Combine the first three above ingredients and simmer until the berries begin to burst. Remove from the heat and taste. If it’s too sweet for you, add a bit of lemon juice to increase the tartness. If it’s too tart, you can add a bit more sugar and return to the heat in order until the sugar is integrated.

Once the flavors are adjusted and the fruit has cooled a bit run it through a food mill or press it through a sieve, to remove the skins.

Pour into clean jars (leaving 1/2 inch head space), wipe rims, apply lids (make sure to simmer your lids at approximately 180 degrees for about ten minutes prior to use) and process in a boiling water canner for fifteen minutes (starting the time when the canner returns to a boil).

This recipe makes just a bit more than a pint (I filled a pint and a four-ounce jar).

If you can’t help but mess around with recipes, try adding some cinnamon, orange zest or a bit of vanilla bean (it’s delicious, it just didn’t match the food memory I was trying to satisfy). Make it your own!

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