Two ingredient easy cranberry salsa will be the hit of the dip table at your next party – and it takes less than five minutes to make!
Perfect for the holidays, this easy cranberry salsa is a unique, fruity twist to ordinary salsa. It’s so beautiful, too, isn’t it, with jewel-like tones of cranberry red garnished with bright green jalapeño? The contrast of the sweet cranberry sauce, savory tomato salsa, with zingy jalapeño peppers, and salty chips is pretty hard to beat.
If you’re looking for a really quick appetizer idea, this one is for you! You probably have the ingredients you need already in your pantry, especially this time of year.
I always grab a can or two of cranberry sauce when I see it on sale at the grocery store. Often there are stacks of it in the middle aisles. I figure I’ll use it somehow and I always do although not usually on the Thanksgiving table. I like to make my own Cinnamon Apple Cranberry Sauce orOrange Cranberry Sauce with Cardamom.
Even if you have a couple of cans still hanging out in your pantry after the holidays, cranberry salsa is welcome in the coming months. Serve it at your next party and just watch it disappear. It’s perfect with a festive co*cktail like cranberry margaritas or a pomegranate mojito.
About this cranberry salsa
This insanely easy cranberry salsa is made with only two ingredients: whole berry cranberry sauce and a jar of thick and chunky salsa. That’s it!
Because there are only those two ingredients, make sure you have the right stuff. You need whole berry cranberry sauce, not the jellied cranberry sauce that comes out of the can all in one can-shaped piece. Use a thick and chunky salsa for best results.
So here’s the how-to’s: Open a can of cranberry sauce, put it into a bowl, and break up any largish chunks. Open the jar of salsa, drain lightly to remove some of the watery juice, and add that to the bowl. Stir lightly until the two ingredients are blended. That’s it!
The bright green garnish of chopped jalapeño peppers is totally optional but it does add a nice pop of color. Chopped cilantro would do the trick, too, if you’re not crazy about peppers.
Serve the salsa with tortilla chips. Have you noticed how many different kinds of tortilla chips out there to choose from? Lately one of my friends has been bringing pumpkin tortilla chips to parties. I’m not sure where she buys those but they have just a hint of cinnamon and I could so easily get addicted to those babies. Super tasty!
Choose the tortilla chips you like best. Have you ever tried blue corn tortilla chips? They’re fun to serve with this colorful salsa. Kale/spinach chips with their green tint would be great, too! Crackers aren’t bad, either.
Well, since there are only two ingredients, it’s a little hard to be creative with this one. I like to use medium salsa but maybe you prefer mild, or fiery hot. That’s up to you.
If you want to go beyond the two basic ingredients, stir in finely chopped red onion, chopped fresh cilantro, or finely diced jalapeños. Or maybe you’d like to try my popular restaurant style salsa or homemade pico de gallo. Mexicali dip is always a hit at parties.
Make ahead and storage
This cranberry salsa can easily be made ahead. In a tightly covered container, it will keep well in the fridge for at least a few days. Makes it a rather perfect appetizer idea, right? I love recipes that can be prepared ahead of time although, admittedly, since this one only takes a couple of minutes to make, the advantage of making it ahead is minimal. But hey, anything you can do to avoid the last minute rush is good, right?
Easy Appetizers
I’m always on the look-out for easy appetizer ideas. Try:
Homemade French Onion Dip — goes great with potato chips or veggies
Mexican Corn Dip
Cherry Cheesecake Dip with Lime (10 minute recipe)
Pepperoni Pizza Pinwheels orPickle Roll Ups with Ham (Pinwheels)
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
One possibility is that you may not have used enough sugar: Sugar helps the sauce firm up, so be sure to use the full amount called for in a recipe. Another possibility is that the cranberries need to boil for longer, releasing their pectin and ensuring a jelly consistency.
Adding a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon or orange zest, a tablespoon of chopped candied peel, or even a splash of juice to your canned sauce will brighten flavors and bring in some homemade flavor.
One 12-ounce bag of cranberries makes about 2 1/4 cups of basic cranberry sauce—in my house, that's enough for about five people. Going the canned route? You'll need at least one can for six people.
There is an important difference between cranberry sauce and cranberry relish and that is that cranberry relish is made from raw ingredients blended in a food processor (it's more fresh and tart tasting) and cranberry sauce is cooked and often much sweeter than relish.
"Instead, start by stirring in one tablespoon maple syrup and one teaspoon of a sweet drink like apple juice, orange juice, or fruity white or red wine. Add more to taste. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt (in small amounts, it intensifies sweetness)."
You may have added too much liquid to the cranberries. In addition to pectin, cranberries contain water, which means you only need to add a splash of liquid to get the cooking going. Add too much and you'll be stirring at the stove much longer than expected.
Cranberries contain natural pectin and will gel without any additions. Cook until the berries pop to release the juices and then simmer another 5 minutes or so. It will not seem thick then but will thicken as it cools. If you really want it thicker, you can add additional pectin with a product such as Sure-Jell.
But why? Ocean Spray says this is to get the cranberry sauce out in one intact piece. “The rounded part of the can that looks like the bottom has an air bubble in it,” Ocean Spray's representative explains. The bubble is there so you can “break the seal the sauce makes with the can.”
Should cranberry sauce be served warm or cold? You could, of course, serve it straight out of the pot, but I think it's best after it's chilled in the fridge. Chilling it helps it firm up some more in the fridge, plus, serving it this way means you can make it days ahead of a holiday.
But that's not the case for prepared cranberry sauces, where prices are up. Lochner pointed out that processors set those prices, not growers, and that there are higher input costs unrelated to berries — like “processing the fruit and getting it to market.”
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.
Directions. In a saucepan, combine cranberries, sugar, orange zest and juice, cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until cranberries burst and mixture thickens slightly, 12 to 15 minutes. (Sauce will thicken more as it cools.)
While there are some editors who prefer homemade cranberry sauce, the canned variety also has quite a following. "There's something so beautifully perfect about the texture of canned cranberry sauce, and none of those homemade mess will ever compete," says Senior Digital Food Editor Kimberly Holland.
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.
If you have followed these instructions, and for some reason the sauce still won't gel, add 1 envelope of unflavoured gelatin to the sauce and bring to a hard boil, stirring frequently.
What to do if the cranberry sauce is too thin or loose. If you inadvertently added too much water, simply bring the cranberry sauce back to the stove top and bring it to a low boil, cooking it down just a bit to help thicken it up.
When the cranberries are heated, the berries begin to break down and pop open. The pectin is then released and reacts with the sugar and juices to form long polymers and thicken the sauce. This process creates the cranberry sauces and jellies which are so familiar at holiday dinners.
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