Are you one of those folks who open up a can of gelatinous cranberry sauce for the Thanksgiving table? Well, you need to knock that off right now. There’s an easier, faster, yummier way! Seriously, it takes the same 5 minutes to make cranberry sauce from scratch as it does to open that can.

For homemade cranberry sauce, mix in a sauce pan 4 cups of cranberries (the 12 oz bag in the produce section of the grocery store), 1 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar, and the zest and juice of 1 orange. The cranberries will start popping after about 5 minutes of cooking and you can mash them with a potato masher. Once they’re mashed and the sugar is dissolved, you have the best cranberry sauce on the planet! And, it’s not gelatinous weirdness with the lines from the can embedded onto it.

NOW FOR THE GLAZE….

Use your leftover cranberries or stock up on the after-Thanksgiving-sale cranberries to can yummy glaze for the whole year. The recipe is close to the sauce recipe, except no orange and double the sugar.

Mix 4 cups of cranberries and 1 cup of water in a sauce pan until the berries start popping. Pour the mixture in a food processer to pulverize. If you don’t get all the cranberries pulverized, that’s okay, you’ll have some small chunks in your glaze. No problem. Still yummy. Once pulverized, pour the mixture back into the sauce pan and add 2 cups of sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Pour mixture into hot, sterilized pint-size canning jars. Place the jars in a waterbath canner and process for 15 minutes. This recipe makes 2 pints. If you want more for your pantry, you can certainly double or triple the recipe.

That’s it!

If you don’t have a canner, you can refrigerate the glaze and use it within a couple weeks.

The glaze is yummy sweet with the slightest tang, making it perfect to glaze over chicken, turkey, duck, or even slather over a warm biscuit or slice of corn bread.

One of the keys to smart eating is to use items as they’re in season. Cranberries are abundant in the US in the fall, so take full advantage of that.

One of the keys to smart living is to Waste Nothing. So, don’t let those cranberries mold in the fridge. Make some glaze for later.