Ina Garten’s Hack for Perfect Cranberry Sauce

We’re always looking for ways to make your time in the kitchen easier and quicker—including during the holidays. Turns out, we’re not the only ones. Ina Garten spilled the beans—or at least the cranberries—in a recent Instagram reel about one of her favorite Thanksgiving time-savers.

As we all know, the Barefoot Contessa is a fan of saying that store-bought items are fine, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use a few upgrades, as she explained in her post.

“When I say store-bought is fine, I don’t mean go to the grocery store, buy an entire Thanksgiving dinner and serve it,” Garten said. “That’s not great. What I do mean is go to the store, buy really good ingredients and hot rod them by adding other ingredients that make the dish so good, nobody will ever know it wasn’t made from scratch.”

That’s the philosophy that inspired her version of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, which starts with a can of whole-berry sauce from the store.

Garten places the canned cranberry sauce into a pot and adds a few tablespoons of freshly squeezed orange juice, about a teaspoon of orange zest and half of a grated apple. She cooks this at a simmer, letting all the flavors mingle and meld—though the apple adds more than just flavor.

“Apple actually has pectin in it, so it helps gel the cranberry sauce,” explains Garten.

After simmering the cranberry sauce for about 15 minutes, it goes into the refrigerator to cool. After it’s cooled down, Garten adds about ¼ cup each of raisins and roughly diced pecans to the sauce. Then she transfers the cranberry sauce to a little silver dish, and it’s ready to serve.

“You have the best cranberry conserve that was incredibly easy,” Garten says of the final product. “And if you don’t tell your secret, I certainly won’t.”

Of course, no Barefoot Contessa reel would be complete without a taste test. “Mmm. It’s chunky, it’s sweet but it’s tart,” Garten says after a bite. “Perfect cranberry sauce—and no fuss.”

Since you may still have some guests who believe the best cranberry sauce is still in the shape of its can, you could serve that alongside Garten’s recipe—and challenge friends and family to expand their cranberry sauce horizons. (And if you want a different spin on Garten’s shortcut while still saving kitchen time, we use a can of cranberry sauce in our Citrus-Rosemary Cranberry Sauce, too.)

Or, if you’re a purist and must start from scratch, you might want to try our Best Homemade Cranberry Sauce, Make-Ahead Cranberry Sauce with Chili & Ponzu or Cranberry Salad. And really, they don’t take much longer than Ina’s shortcut version—plus you can control the amount of sugar you add, which may be helpful if you’re serving folks who have to be careful about their blood sugar.

Whether you choose to make it from scratch, eat it straight from the can or do an “almost homemade” version, antioxidant-rich, disease-fighting cranberries are sure to show up in some form on your Thanksgiving table. The great thing is that all the cranberry sauce recipes can be made ahead of time, freeing you up for more important things on the big day—like making memories with family and friends.