Elevate Canned Cranberry Sauce By Adding A Spicy Kick

Even among home cooks who swear that the best Thanksgiving recipes are made from scratch, plenty will still proudly adorn their holiday tables with a dish of canned cranberry sauce among their epic seasonal spread. There's just something about the tubed stuff that, for many, evokes nostalgia. While Ocean Spray, the nation's leading brand of this iconic holiday staple, claims that over 5 million gallons of the company's canned cranberry sauce are consumed over the fall and winter holiday season every year, some cranberry sauce lovers might wish this classic seasonal food had a bit more to offer in the flavor department. The solution? Turn up the heat.

If you've been eating canned cranberry sauce for years but wish there was a way to make this classic mainstay more exciting around the holidays, you may just need to add a bit of spice. However, the best part about leveling up the seasoning of this celebrated side dish is that you don't need to be a fan of scorching heat to improve your canned cranberry sauce. Most homemade cranberry sauce varieties are made with a mixture of fresh cranberries, citrus fruit, sugar, and warming spices like cinnamon and clove. Knowing this, it's easy to apply multiple layers of flavor to your next can of cran.

As it turns out, elevating this sweet and tart side dish can be done in a number of different ways. Peppers might seem like an obvious choice, but with so many types of chiles available, there's lots of room for experimentation. For bracing heat, simmer your sauce with diced serranos or jalapeños (for less spice, deseed them first). New Mexican hatch chiles make an ideal cranberry sauce, whether you're cooking with the fresh green ones or the toastier roasted red variety. Canned sauce lovers who aren't afraid of heat could also add a generous scoop of chili crisp, spooning some of the fiery condiment over the prepared sauce and simply mashing them together for an upgrade in flavor and texture. For less heat but a welcome tangy flavor, give pickled pepperoncini a shot.

Beyond using peppers with different heat levels, you can also mix milder spices into your cranberry sauce to improve the taste. Traditionally, there are some variations of homemade cranberry sauce that include a whole cinnamon stick during the cooking process, so when serving the canned kind, feel free to try a bit of ground cinnamon, clove, or even allspice; if you crave more of a bite, a bit of ground ginger, mustard, or horseradish powder all work. While a few of these options may have already piqued your interest, there are even more creative ways to spice up your cranberry sauce, depending on how creative you want to get.

Using spices like cinnamon and nutmeg will give your cranberry sauce a mildly spicy yet warming appeal, but there are myriad other surprising ways to elevate that standard can. Instead of using ground ginger, try a bit of freshly grated ginger root. Raw ginger root has a sharpness that may give your canned sauce just the right amount of zing. Citrus zest is a great way to add the kind of sweetly sour brightness that canned cranberries often lack.

Don't be afraid to lean on your favorite herbs as well; mint has a bit of an edge that would pair nicely. For more complex herbal notes, consider incorporating some herbs de Provence — a heady spice blend that includes marjoram and lavender — into your next batch of canned sauce.

Did you know you can also upgrade your canned cranberry sauce with cocktail ingredients? Alcoholic beverages like bourbon, sherry, and even zinfandel wine pair well with cranberry. To bring spice back into the equation, you could also add Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey or either of the Ancho Reyes liqueurs. To soften the boozy bite, simmer your sauce for around 15 minutes, until the alcohol mostly cooks off, reducing by about half. The remaining taste will give your cranberry sauce a distinctly smoother, more developed flavor profile. From jalapeños to cinnamon to whiskey, endless options exist for giving your canned cranberry sauce a spicy kick. Which will you choose?