Published in: Art and Culture

Highbush cranberry sauce | Adeline Panamaroff

Author Tee Adeyemo

Published on: September 7, 2022

Love having fruity sauces with your meats?

Have trouble affording both tasty meat products and a flavorful condiment to accompany them?

Why not try foraging for highbush cranberries and making an easy sauce to round out your poultry dishes, and add some vitamin C to your diet to keep the scurvy away?

My Granny deeply loved her highbush cranberries. They were taken from root cuttings that she found along the highway between her small prairie town and the border city to which she made an annual trip. (In order to see her parents.)

She prized this late August-early September fruit so much that once she had her fill of them, she invited trusted friends to share in the bounty.

Granny liked her high bush cranberry sauce on roasted chicken but also used the fruit in jelly. This she used on toast or as the filling in thumbprint cookies.

Highbush cranberries are not related at all to the large cranberries that you can buy at the grocery. Where the similarity lies is in the flavour. A small berry, the highbush cranberry ripens in late Summer and early Fall.

The red berries grow in umbrella-shaped bunches and have a single flat pit. When unsweetened, highbush cranberries can have a dirty sock odour.

The red of the berries is eye-catching amongst the greens, yellows, and burgundies of the fall leaf canopy. The highbush cranberry can be found in urban settings amongst the other native plant life in natural green spaces where stands of aspen, spruce and wild roses thrive.

Utensils:

• collecting container

• sorting bowl

• sieve

• berry press (optional)

• medium-sized stoke pot

• stirring spoon

• measuring cup

Ingredients:

• 4 cups highbush cranberry

• 1 cup water

• 1 cup sugar

Directions:

1. Harvest the high bush cranberries in your collection container.

2. Sort through them to remove any stems.

3. Wash them under running water in the sieve.

4. Measure out the number of berries that you need.

5. To remove the pits, press out the juice and pulp through a berry press. If you do not mind the pits, they can remain in and will give you more fibre in your diet.

6. Place water and sugar in the stoke pot and bring to boil, at medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

7. Add the whole or pulped cranberries and let the sauce come back to a boil. Let it boil for 10 min., stirring frequently to avoid scorching the bottom of the pot.

8. Remove from heat and enjoy immediately on roasted chicken, turkey, or other meats. The excess can be refrigerated or frozen for later.

This sauce can also be put on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, or yogurt.

It continues to thicken even after it stops cooking. This would make a great foraged addition to any Fall harvest holiday meal and can be a condiment for the main dish or as a tart addition to the dessert.