Make Cranberry Orange Sauce with an Herbal Twist

Reader Contribution by Lemon Verbena Lady
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You can check out the Lemon Verbena Lady at her bloghttp://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com.

I was thinking about Thanksgiving coming up next week (another year has flown by) and wanted to give you an herbal twist on one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes. I have kept some of my mother’s newspaper clips and recipes from boxes of food.


The original Ocean Spray recipe calls only for cranberries, oranges and sugar.
Photo by Nancy Heraud

This recipe is obviously from an Ocean Spray cranberry box from years ago. The orange jello is an afterthought of my mother’s (I think), not in the original recipe. When I visited www.jello.com there was a cranberry-orange relish recipe, but nothing like this one. I love this recipe because it is quick, easy, and you can make it ahead of time.

The herbal twist is that I steep rosemary in the water before you start the recipe. Besides the addition of the orange jello, the rosemary adds another layer of flavor to the dish. Rosemary for me is always associated with the holidays and is the perfect addition to this recipe because it goes very well with cranberries and orange.

Here is a picture of the finished relish and my version of the recipe with the original proportions in italics.

Try this homemade relish with rosemary for your Thanksgiving celebration.
Photo by Nancy Heraud

Herbed Cranberry Orange Relish
Original proportions in italics 

Besides using it as a side dish on Thanksgiving, I put it on a turkey sandwich the day after as a condiment. Makes about 4 cups  (Makes about 6 cups)

• 1 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries (1-pound bag)
• 1 cup sugar (2 cups)
• 1 1/2 cup cold water (2 1/2 cups)
• 3/4 of a 3-ounce package of orange jello (about 1/4 cup) (3/4 of a 6-ounce package or about 5 ounces of the 6-ounce package)
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary (4 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary)

1. Put water and rosemary in a saucepan and bring to a boil for 10 seconds. Remove from heat and steep for 15 minutes.

2. Strain rosemary out and put 1 cup of rosemary flavored water (or 2 cups for the larger recipe) into a 2 quart (or larger for the larger proportion) saucepan.

3. Add sugar and cranberries. Bring to a boil and boil rapidly for about 5 minutes until the cranberries have popped. It should not take longer than 5 minutes.

4. Take off the heat and incorporated the dried orange jello. Let the mixture cool and refrigerate. You can serve it cold or at room temperature. 

(NOTE:  For those of you who need to use Splenda and sugar-free orange jello in substitution for the sugar and orange jello, I think it will work out just fine.)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it is when I met The Herbal Husband. So it is doubly special for the two of us. I hope all of my fellow bloggers on the Herb Companion website and you, the readers, have a wonderfully herbal Thanksgiving.

Photo by Nancy Heraud 


If you have herb questions, please feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail me at lemonverbenalady@hotmail.com. Talk to you soon.

  • Published on Nov 18, 2010
Tagged with: Reader Contributions
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