Cranberry Sauce - easy and sugar free

This season we have made cranberry sauce that celebrates the clean, sharp tartness of the fresh fruit, using only honey and fruit-sugars as sweeteners - keeping it low GI and free from refined sugar… It is nothing like the over-sweet jams and jellies sold as cranberry ‘sauce’ in the supermarkets.

Method:

Take the skins of one and a half grapefruit (hint: have them for breakfast and keep back the skins), cut them into chunks and boil them, just covered in enough water for a few minutes until they soften and have given up their pectin and some of their bitterness.

Remove the grapefruit peels and add the fresh cranberries (about 250 grams) with four cloves. Add red grape juice to almost cover the cranberries and stir as they heat.

Add a dessert spoon of honey, a dessert spoon of brandy and also a generous squirt of lemon juice. Continue stirring over enough heat to keep it all simmering.

Add about half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and, depending on how sweet you want your sauce, add some fruit sugar, perhaps a couple of generous teaspoons…

If the mixture becomes too thick, add small amounts of red grape juice to keep it stir-able and continue stirring until the fruits have split open. It should only take a few minutes.

You should end up with a thick, lumpy deep-red goo, where you can still see that it is made from actual cranberries. Pour this into a sterile jar and seal its lid. It will set as it cools and is ready to use right away.

This cranberry sauce has a ‘grown up’ flavour, the bitterness of the grapefruit and their aroma comes through a little and the tartness of the cranberries is right up-front. It is a sauce for people who like cranberry and want a sharp sauce to cut through the richness of festive roasts as an accompaniment. Once it has cooled, keep it in the fridge. The honey and lemon do act as a partial preservative but it is not a jam and because this is a low sugar recipe, it will not keep indefinitely and may start to ferment within a couple of weeks, but it should all be gone before then!

(Last year we did a similar recipe using four Satsumas cut into quarters for the pectin – and left them in the sauce – and used port instead of brandy. I think we also added more honey and the result was sweeter, less bitter and more ‘traditional’ - but still very enjoyable and quickly used up.)