Welcome to Cooking Without Recipes, in which we teach you how to make a dish we love, but don’t worry too much about the nitty-gritty details of the recipe, so you can create your own spin. This is recipe editor Liesel Davis's savory-sweet cranberry sauce that's saved her holiday year after year.
Many years ago, my second year in New York and my first Thanksgiving away from home, a group of friends and I gathered for the weekend at a house in the Poconos. Being young and naïve, I happily accepted the chore of cooking all of Thanksgiving dinner. I was working full-time, and also in grad school, so I had very few pockets of time available to cook. Not to mention we were also driving everything up on Thanksgiving Day and finishing the final meal preparations up at the cabin. It remains the most ambitious meal I've ever done for the holiday to date.
To pull it all off, I had a master plan that started weeks in advance and involved tasks like making and then freezing pats of compound butter before work, tearing up bread cubes to sit out on baking sheets on my ironing board overnight (due to my classically cramped New York City kitchen), and pre-baking pie shells between laundry runs on the weekends. But of all the things I made that year, the only one that stuck was the cranberry sauce.
I liked being able to roast the sauce—hands off—in the oven. Once it was all in a baking dish, it practically made itself. I don't remember the original recipe exactly; the version I make now has evolved over the years to become a loose approximation of where it started. What I did like from that first version was the addition of shallots to the sweet-tart mix, which rounds everything out and goes so well with the sage and thyme in the other dishes. All in all, it’s very forgiving and may be the least time consuming item that you put on your table this year. Most important, it makes a superior condiment for sandwiches the next day.
Here’s what to do: Place a rack in upper third of the oven and preheat to 350°. Toss two 12-oz. bags of fresh cranberries (two 10-oz. bags of frozen cranberries will also work) with a thinly sliced shallot, 1 cup (packed) light brown sugar, 1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest, 1 tsp. finely grated orange zest, and ¼ cup fresh orange juice in a 13x9" glass or ceramic baking dish. Roast, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have softened and the juices are starting to thicken (it will set up more as it cools, so don't worry about it looking a little loose), about 1 hour. When it is just about done, give it a taste and adjust with a little more sugar or acid if needed.
It's easily adjusted for flavor and balance at the end, and you can make more or less depending on your headcount (this one serves 6 to 8 people). I tend to be the kind of cook that doesn't stick to tried-and-true dishes; it's always an adventure. But this relish is the one dish I make every year—no matter where I may be cooking.