I’ve been pretty obsessed with cranberries lately! I mean they make such fabulous nightshade-free sauces like this cranberry ketchup it’s kinda hard not to get a little obsessed!
October is prime time for harvesting cranberries here in the NW. So last weekend hubby and I drove up the coast to Long Beach, Washington to pick our own cranberries at Cranguyma Farm for just 50 cents a pound u-pick! We also stopped by the super cool Cranberry Museum and Pacific Coast Cranberry Research Foundation located just down the road from Cranguyma Farm AND we visited the annual Cranberry Festival in Ilwaco, the next town over too! Oh, and if you are into cranberries as much as I am, be sure to bring some spending money to purchase all sorts of cranberry goodies in the museum gift shop, including my favorite no-white-sugar added cranberry jam, along with cranberry candles, cranberry lip balm (I bought this too!), cranberry ice cream, and fresh cranberries if you visit in October.
If you visit the Cranberry Museum you will learn all about how they grow and harvest cranberries in the NW. To sum it up short and sweet, you can harvest cranberries by dry picking (this is what we did) or flooding the area they are growing in to create a bog, use equipment to shake them loose from the small bushes so the cranberries will float to top of the water and then they are funneled out to a collection area in the corner of the bog.
Me in my favorite cranberry colored skirt (that I made DIY!) picking cranberries in the rain.
Cranberry Ketchup
Cook time: 10 mins
Total time: 10 mins
Serves: 2 cups
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Servings 2 cups
Author Andrea Wyckoff
Ingredients
2 cups cranberries fresh or frozen
1/4 cup sweetener of your choice (honey coconut nectar, etc)
~ Note: or use 1 cup leftover sweetened cranberry sauce in place of whole cranberries and sweetener
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
2 pinches clove powder
2 pinches allspice*
2 pinches nutmeg*
2 pinches sea salt
*For AIP omit allspice and nutmeg – instead you can use 1 pinch of mace
Instructions
If using frozen cranberries add all ingredients into a sauce pot and simmer together until cranberries are soft.
Blend ingredients together in a high speed blender.
Pour blended cranberry ketchup into a sauce pot and simmer over medium heat for 8 minutes. (You don’t have to heat it up, but I find it makes a much smoother ketchup when heated after blending. But feel free to blend and serve raw if you’d like to.)
It’s then ready to serve warm or cooled.
Note: I start out with a pinch of each spice and add more to taste from there. The allspice and clove really give it that “real ketchup” flavor, but it doesn’t take much!
After heating, I pour the cranberry ketchup into a glass jar, leave the lid off until fully cool, and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. I love to serve it with my paleo sweet potato fries.