Healthy Cranberry Sauce Recipe - 2 Ways! (Paleo, Vegan, Naturally Sweet) - (2024)

This healthy cranberry sauce recipe is paleo, vegan, and naturally sweetened with maple syrup or honey. It’s made with fresh ingredients and is the perfect condiment to add to your collection of Thanksgiving recipes.

Cranberry sauce adds a delicious tart/sweet flavor to any meal and of course that gorgeous pop of red color isn’t bad either.

Aaaand there’s a bonus! This cranberry sauce can be made 2 different ways! You can choose to make the traditional recipe, or spice things up a bit and try the recipe for sweet and spicy jalapeño cranberry sauce!

Homemade cranberry sauce is A GAZILLION times tastier than the store bought canned version. It’s hard for me to even look at that overly sweet weird textured, corn syrup laden stuff without my stomach turning…I think I was traumatized as child. 😂

I PROMISE you won’t ever go back to the canned cranberry sauce after making this recipe. Never ever.

Homemade healthy cranberry sauce is incredibly easy too. You’re gonna love it! And, you don’t need to worry about it taking up too much stove time – in fact, you can even make this healthy cranberry sauce a few days before Thanksgiving, and store it in an air tight container in the fridge until the big day.

This cranberry sauce recipe can be sweetened to your liking. I prefer my cranberry sauce to be a little on the tart side. However, you can easily add more maple syrup to this recipe if you’d prefer a sweeter cranberry sauce.

If you are needing a vegan cranberry sauce, just make sure you stick with the maple syrup option, and not the honey.

Healthy Cranberry Sauce – Ingredients

Fresh cranberries
Maple syrup (honey works too)
Fresh orange juice
Orange zest
Cinnamon (optional)

Healthy Cranberry Sauce – How To Make

First, place the fresh cranberries, maple syrup, orange juice, orange zest, and cinnamon into a medium sized sauce pan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes stirring occasionally.

During this time, the fresh cranberries will begin to pop open and release their juices. Cranberries are naturally very tart. Which is why some form of sugar is needed to sweeten the sauce up a bit.

For a thicker sauce, cook for the whole 15 minutes, as shown here in the photos. Note that the sauce will thicken up a little while it’s cooling to room temperature.

How To Make Sweet And Spicy Jalapeño Cranberry Sauce

For a fun twist on the classic cranberry sauce recipe, add in 1 finely diced jalapeño, and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper to the pot before it simmers. It make such a delicious sauce for Thanksgiving dinner and your guests will love the unexpected kick!

Worried about having leftover cranberry sauce after the big day? Ahh, just wait until next week my friends. I will have a delicious treat for you!

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If you try this healthy cranberrysauce, or any of my recipes, please leave a review and star rating – thank you!

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