How To Use Cranberry Sauce Vs Jam In Your Holiday Cocktails

Is it even a holiday cocktail if it doesn't include cranberry in some form? Whether they're dried or fresh, muddled or infused, sauced or jammed, cranberries bring a quintessential color and flavor that make your cocktails taste and look like Christmas. Molly Horn, the Chief Mixologist and Spirits Educator at Total Wine & More, has some advice to offer on the form of cranberry you should use for cocktails. Cranberry sauce and jam are different after all, and according to Horn, they call for different cocktail applications, preparations, and recipe adjustments.

"Cranberry sauce is more tart-sweet, while cranberry jam runs on the sweeter side," Horn says. "This is an important distinction as they work well in different styles of cocktails. Just be sure to shake hard with ice in order to incorporate cranberry sauce, as it has a fairly firm texture that needs a good beating to really blend into your cocktail." But, while store-bought cranberry sauce might be harder to shake into your cocktails, the sweetness of cranberry jam comes with a catch too. "You can decrease the amount of simple syrup you use in these recipes when adding cranberry jam, as the jam will bring some of the sweetness," Horn suggests.

So, while they can certainly be used interchangeably, before you go shaking and stirring these into your holiday party mixers, consider Horn's notes. Some cocktails might work better with cranberry jam than with sauce, or vice versa.

Knowing the differences between cranberry sauce and jam gives you a better idea of which will work best in what drink recipes. But, if you still need more direction, Molly Horn is here. "Cranberry sauce can be a fun addition to, say, a festive cosmopolitan or a Moscow mule," she says. Just make sure that, if you're following either our classic cosmopolitan recipe or our easy Moscow mule recipe, you give it an extra bit of shaking prior to serving. For easier blending, and even more of a winter vibe, you might consider making a frozen cranberry sauce cosmopolitan instead.   

"Cranberry jam can add a nice touch of tangy sweetness and festive flavor to a whiskey sour or an old fashioned," Horn suggests. Tasting Table has used cranberry juice to make whiskey sours in the past, and a bit of cranberry jam shaken in with the rest of your classic whiskey sour ingredients will have a similar effect. Our roundup of nine old fashioned variations you need to try features a Christmas inspired old fashioned that could really use a bit of cranberry jam, too. You could also always sneak some sauce into our Christmas punch if you're hosting a big group or hard liquor isn't your thing.