Cranberry Orange Sauce With No Added Sugar – Easy Healthy 2-Ingredient Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

Can you eat cranberries without sugar? ›

Easy, delicious cranberries mixed with spices, salt & olive oil makes one of the most healthy cranberry side dish or snack which you can enjoy for holidays & more. Adjust the spice level based on your preference if you don't want it spicy.

Health Benefits

Cranberries are also rich in vitamin C and fiber, as well as the metabolism-boosting mineral manganese. And yes, you reap all these benefits whether the cranberry sauce on your holiday table is homemade or canned, jellied or whole-berry.

There are lots of ways to add this fruit to your diet. Some varieties, such as dried cranberries, cranberry juice, and canned cranberry sauce, are available year-round. The healthiest way to enjoy cranberries is to eat them fresh. Raw cranberries take about 16 months to fully mature and are gathered in early fall.

One study published in Food and Function found that adding whole cranberries to a high-fat meal may improve postprandial blood glucose levels (AKA how high your blood sugar get after a meal). A food like cranberry sauce is traditionally made with ingredients including real cranberries, sugar and spices.

Unsweetened, pure cranberry juice is a good source of both vitamin C and vitamin E. It's also a decent source of several other vitamins and minerals, including: vitamin C: 26% of the daily value (DV) vitamin E: 20% of the DV.

It's perfectly fine to serve up cranberry sauce — whole berry or jelled — straight out of the can. But in my experience, heating the canned sauce up takes its flavor to the next level. Plus, it becomes a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Cranberry is best known for preventing urinary tract infections (UTIs), commonly caused by bacteria known as Escherichia coli (E. coli).

Is it safe to eat cranberries raw? Cranberries are generally considered safe whether they are cooked or raw. However, because of their notoriously bitter, sharp taste, most people prefer not to eat them raw or unsweetened. This bitterness is due to the high tannin content of cranberries.

Do cranberries cleanse kidneys? ›

So how does cranberry juice help? It can prevent bacteria from sticking to the walls of your kidneys, which helps prevent an infection from forming in the first place.

Nutritional Facts Face-Off

The homemade cranberry sauce has nearly half the calories, carbohydrates, and sugars compared to the store brand. It also has more fiber as well as potassium!

Cranberry sauce can be served either as a gooey liquid or as a solid jelly. The jellied version is solid enough to retain the shape of the container in which it's placed whereas the sauce version is much more fluid. The difference between the fluid sauce and the jelly versions comes down to pectin.

Slight edge to homemade. Ocean Spray's sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, whereas homemade uses cane sugar. I spent an hour making the homemade cranberry sauce. Prep for the store-bought one, for those unfamiliar, goes: open can, pour onto serving plate, eat.

Yes, raw cranberries are safe to consume raw, but you probably don't want to eat them that way. "Cranberries are safe to eat raw. However, usually they are cooked and have sugar added because of the bitter and sharp taste they have when raw," says Kelly West Keyser, a registered dietitian in Alabama.

You can eat them raw if you enjoy their tartness, but many people find them too sour on their own. Cooking or sweetening them in recipes is more common. Dried Cranberries: Dried cranberries are sweetened and are a popular snack on their own. They are also commonly used in salads, trail mixes, and baked goods.

Unlike other berries, cranberries are low in sugar and high in acidity. They require sweetening to be palatable. During this step, the cranberries are sweetened to replace what nature left out; the additional sweetness helps to balance their natural tartness.

Out of all fruits, cranberries have one of the lowest amounts of sugar. In every cup of cranberries, there is only 4g of sugar. This compares to raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries, which have 5, 7, and 7 grams of sugar per cup, respectively.