OT/ PSA: LC cranberry sauce

For those who are trying to lower their overall carb intake during the holiday season, here’s what I did for a lower carb version of cranberry sauce.

Package raw cranberries. 16 oz (454 gm)
1/4 cup water.
3/4 cup non-sugar sweetener mix: erythritol + allulose + monkfruit. This is a store brand version. I assume it’s commonly available mix.
Spices - dash of each: ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, cloves, and black pepper.

Place in a sauce pan, bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer for 12 to 15 minutes.

This rivals any sugar sweetened cranberry sauce I’ve ever had.

I intend to make a pumpkin pie using the same non-sugar sweetener.
I’m not a fan of pie crust with pumpkin filling, so, I’ll leave that “starch” out, and just have a pumpkin custard.

:alien:
ralph

This is NOT “no carb”. It’s just lower carb than the usual, canned variety.

The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup packed brown sugar.
And 1/4 cup apple juice, which also has sugar.

Raw Cranberries contain some sugars.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171722/nutrients
A 100g portion:

Ie. Its not “no carb”. Its just lower carb than it would be with the brown sugar.

The Keto/Low Carb crowd accepts erythritol, allulose, and monk fruit as Zero-carb sweeteners. Therefore, this recipe is “no added sugar”?

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I don’t particularly like (really my stomach doesn’t like) erythritol, so I use other non-sugar sweeteners instead. A few years ago, I made my cranberry sauce more or less this way with ONE important addition … i grated some fresh ginger into it. And it was THE BEST cranberry sauce I’ve ever had.

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I stopped eating several sour fruits, cranberries, strawberries, and passion fruit (great with rum and bitters) because they required sweeteners and most artificial sweeteners have health issues. I checked erythritol + allulose + monkfruit on the internet and they all seem safe enough.

Enjoy the cranberry sauce!. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Captain

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Interesting. I’ve been making LC cranberry sauce for years but I’ve never gone the spice route. Thanks for the suggestion.

FWIW, I usually add orange oil in at the end for a cran-orange sauce. I tend to just dump in ingredients and taste/adjust as I go. Not big on recipes, but you can get a ton of them here: AlldayIdreamaboutfood.com. Looking at making this one soon:Keto Pecan Pie Cheesecake Nut crusts are way better than flour based crusts any day, IMO, and totally low carb.

There is a small percent of the population impacted by erythritol. Happily I am not one. Which sweetener do you use?

Thanks for the fresh grated ginger idea.

IP

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I use all sorts. Let’s take today for example. In my morning coffee, I use one packet of splenda (yellow). In the cottage cheese/yogurt with blueberries that I am eating right now, I use “Splenda naturals” (stevia, green). For baking (which I rarely do), I use allulose (liquid) or one of the other blends (powdered). When I make french toast, I have to use real sugar because nothing else caramelizes properly. I don’t eat french toast anyway (too many carbs to begin with).

I also just happened to look in the pantry and we have “Monkfruit in the raw” as well (burnt orange).

For many years I used a liquid form of a cyclamate-based sweetener. That was one of my favorites because only a TINY drop was needed for most things. But it could only be purchased outside the USA and that turned into a painful endeavor after a while. And when I say “tiny”, I mean tiny, for example, for coffee all that was needed was to dip the tip of a toothpick into the liquid sweetener and then swirl the end of the toothpick in the coffee. I sometimes made homemade ice cream, and all it would need was a few drops shaken out of the bottle to sweeten perhaps a full liter of ice cream. And as an aside, that ice cream was heavenly - I usually used 42% heavy cream as the main ingredient. And if I was making butter pecan, I would lightly saute the pecan halves in lots and lots of butter before letting it cool a bit and slowly adding it to the churner making the ice cream. Or for strawberry ice cream, I would macerate the fresh strawberries a bit in some water mixed with sweetener, and again, let it cool somewhat and slowly add to the churner. Oh, those ice creams were terrific! I should do it again!

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I’ve learned to make my own homemade cranberry apple sauce without added sugar. The apple part provides all the sweetness I need. This cranberry apple sauce is great for flavoring my oat bran hot cereal and my homemade muesli/yogurt/milk parfait. I get my cranberry fix without the added sugar.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 5 organic apples (chopped and cored but not peeled): I keep the peels on to keep the fiber and other nutrients.
  • 1 cup of fresh organic cranberries, washed
  • 1 cup of water
  • 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder

I put all of these ingredients into my pressure cooker. 4 to 5 hours with the slow cooker setting turns this into cranberry apple sauce. YUM!

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None. I got used to not using sweeteners, now I like my coffee without sweetener. Sometimes I add sweet fruit to dishes.

The Captain
sweet girls and bitter coffee, the other way around is terrible! :wink:

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I like my women like I like my coffee: strong, bitter and hand-picked by Juan Valdez.

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You trust Juan Valdez?

The Captain

A man of experience.

Well, didn’t have fresh grated ginger, which no doubt would have been even better, but whipped up a cranberry/rhubarb/fig/cardamon/ginger sauce, lightly sweetened with erythritol, that is just amazing! A little bit of rum in there too, I guess, as the figs came from making fig liquor. Amazing!

Hope you all have a great holiday.

IP

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I made pumpkin and egg custard. Just the filling. I usually eat the filling and discard the pie crusts, so just left the crust out this time.
I used the regular recipes, only substituing the erythritol allulose monkfruit sweetener mix for the sugar, therefore these were LC and Keto?
Some egg custard recipes include a couple TBSP flour. I used the Southern Living recipe which does not include flour. I also added a tsp of vanilla extract.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the outcomes.

Happy Thanksgiving to all yall.
ralph

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