Every year I seem to find myself in the same position at the Thanksgiving dinner table: drowning in vats of gravy, mounds of mashed potatoes, and a sea of other dishes that meet the criteria of “Thanksgiving food.” The only flotation device in sight, rescuing me from my pumpkin-flavored demise, is the often overlooked and extremely underrated cranberry sauce.
Unlike anything else on the table, cranberry sauce is a confection, a condiment, and a side dish in its own right. Cranberry sauce is sweet in a way that complements the savory flavors of the other dishes, unlike cinnamon sugar and pumpkin spice. People try to replicate this ability of cranberry sauce by adding things like marshmallows and brown sugar to their meals. However, these attempts have always fallen flat, lacking the unique flavor profile of cranberry sauce.
Now there’s the great debate: is it okay to eat cranberry sauce that’s from the can on Thanksgiving? And my hot take is, yes, it is okay. Of course, everything tastes better homemade, and canned cranberry sauce’s consistency is more similar to that of jello rather than an actual sauce. However, cranberry sauce is cranberry sauce: whether it’s spent hours simmering in an antique pot over low heat and being stirred gently every couple of minutes, or whether, you just dump it from a can into a chipped dish and move on with your life, it’s going to taste great. When it comes to cranberry sauce, the negative connotation surrounding the use of canned food items disappears because it’s just that incredible.
If you really think about it, cranberry sauce is the superhero of Thanksgiving. It swoops in every November and prevents the turkey from being dry, adds a subtle tartness to the cornbread, offsets the blandness of the potatoes, and after doing all this, still tastes great the next day with leftovers. So this year, if you find yourself sitting at the Thanksgiving table overwhelmed by the assortment of food in front of you, reach for the cranberry sauce. You won’t regret it.
