How To Serve Canned Cranberry Sauce So It Actually Looks Appetizing

Love it or hate it, there's no denying that cranberry sauce is a fall holiday staple that's not likely to go away anytime soon. Some people believe it's not truly Thanksgiving without a log of canned cranberry sauce sitting in the middle of the table. Just because your cranberry sauce comes out of a can, and might be more jello than sauce, doesn't mean you can't dress it up to give your festive centerpiece a run for its money. Canned cranberry is often an afterthought for most holiday spreads, with many slopping out the coagulated log onto a plate, slicing it into rounds, and calling it a day. But we're here to save your aesthetics and to advocate for a different way to do canned cranberry this year.

When it comes to canned cranberry presentation, we encourage you to get creative. The simplest way to get the crinkle out of the cran is to throw it into a pot over heat to slightly warm the mixture until it takes a more organic form. We encourage you to try folding fresh cranberries, with a little bit of orange zest, cinnamon, and a splash of port if you're really ambitious. By adding cranberries, you're not only giving the single-note cranberry sauce more texture but also re-introducing more of that sour kick that's lost with all the sugar in the can. The added orange zest breaks up the monotonous mountain of ruby red. While the cinnamon and port will add more complex flavors to the canned cranberries while turning it into a legitimate-looking dish that you (sort of) cooked.

If you want to lean into the jiggly nostalgia of canned cranberry sauce, might we suggest using different-shaped cookie cutters to cut out little shapes from the canned cranberry disks? This may not be the most sophisticated presentation, but it will definitely be a hit with the kids' table. And, you can mash up the leftover cranberry as garnish around your serving plate. Not ready to part with the traditional canned cranberry sauce disks? Try dressing up your disks with a sprig of sugared rosemary. The earthy-green contrasted against the wine-red of the cranberry sauce gives you a beautiful plated presentation and you still keep the ease of simply slicing up the canned cranberries. 

As we mentioned above, citrus is a great additive to canned cranberry sauce. The sweetness from the canned stuff plays beautifully off the acid from whichever citrus you add. Lemon and orange peel are traditional adds, but consider layering slices of cranberry sauce with thinly sliced kumquat or tangerine to add something a little different. Even better: Turn those kumquats and tangerines into candied slices to add back a bit of that sweetness. 

If the look of canned cranberry sauce is harshing your festivities mellow, we know just the thing to brighten it right up: a cranberry sauce frozen cosmo. This fall drink is sure to make you fall head over heels with canned cranberries, if only for the night.