I have never been a cranberry fan until Matt made this Healthy Cranberry Sauce! Now, i’ll be stuffing my face this year with turkey, low carb rolls, pecan pie and this cranberry sauce! It’s also a really simple recipe you can make days in advance if you want to get it out of the way before the big preparations begin on the actual day of Thanksgiving! Just because you’re on a ketogenic or low carb diet does not mean you shouldn’t be able to indulge in your favorite Thanksgiving foods!
My Favorite Thanksgiving Cranberry Sauce!
If you weren’t around last year, you may have missed out on all the holiday recipes we made. We had pies and side dishes galore. We even had a cranberry relish recipe, but we think this is 100x better and will be loved by everyone at the dinner table! Maybe you’re not a cranberry person, and that is totally alright because we have many more low carb holiday recipe options, such as our low carb green bean casserole, cauliflower mash and keto gravy, and pumpkin pie cheesecake! Not impressed? Well, we’ve got a bunch more great holiday recipes in line for you this year so keep checking back because you won’t want to miss out!
Who Doesn’t Want To Make An Easy Cranberry Sauce?
When the holidays approach you start to see lights strung throughout stores, coffee cups change to holiday colors and people start to smile a little more. However, the actual day of Thanksgiving and Christmas can be quite the opposite. It’s not always fun gathering with family and distant relatives, sharing in drinks and a laboring meal that one or a couple people have prepared. Whether or not you are hosting the holiday dinner I think you’ll be happy to know that this cranberry sauce recipe is easy to make in advance and allows you to not only indulge in a sugar free cranberry sauce at dinner, but have more time to make positive memories with family and friends!
Healthy Cranberry Sauce
As I already mentioned, cranberry sauce has never been my thing. And, those who do love it are obsessed with it. I have friends that refuse to have Thanksgiving without the cranberry sauce. Even when Matt completed the recipe and took beautiful pictures I was hesitant to try it, but to my and his surprise I was impressed. I even went in for seconds! Maybe I’d been missing out on cranberry sauce all these years or maybe this healthy cranberry sauce is going to be your new favorite holiday recipe!
Recipe can be quickly added to MyFitnessPal – Search “KetoConnect – Healthy Cranberry Sauce”
Healthy Cranberry Sauce | Low Carb, Keto Friendly!
Ingredients:
- 8 ounces Fresh Cranberries
- 1 cup Water
- 2 tbsp Chia Seeds
- 40 drops Liquid Stevia
Instructions:
- Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat and add the cranberries and water. Allow to reduce until you achieve a thick consistency.
- The cranberries will burst and this should take about 8-10 minutes.
- Once fully reduced and thickened to liking, remove from heat, and stir in the chia seeds and liquid stevia.
- Pour into a seal able container and store in the fridge or serve immediately. Enjoy!
This looks great! I used to make mine w/ orange juice and a cinnamon stick in addition to the sugar and water – this year I’ll just do the zest. Thanks for sharing!
What ourpose do the chia seeds serve? Can they be omitted and keep the integrity of the product?
They are the thickening agent. Without it, it would be syrup, we’d imagine.
They also bring the net carbs waaay down!
I’ve made cranberry sauce without chia and it thickens fine if you reduce, lot of pectin in cranberries
I believe cranberries have enough natural pectin that they thicken up as they cool once cooked. I made it in the past from scratch with o.j.and sugar. I never had to adf anything to thicken it. But the recipe sounds aweso.e with the chia seeds! I cannot wait to try it!
Nice twist is diet ginger sale instead of water and some orange zest
why not add a little fresh ginger in there
I added diet cherry pepsi in place of water. was great and yes they thicken as they reduce. I also popped then with potato masher, as they cooked.
Do you have to use Stevia liquid?
We’d recommend it.
Do you think this could make jellied sauce by adding gelatin?
Definitely a possibility!
I made this without the chia; I added a teaspoon of orange zest (try it!) & used a granulated erythritol/monk fruit sweetener instead of the stevia drops. You don’t need the chia if you have the cranberry/water ratio right; I didn’t have enough cranberries, but I used unflavored gelatin (just 1/4 t or so) to get it to set up better. I had 8 oz of cranberries, and used 1/4c of the sweetener if anyone is interested in that ratio (we like it tart, so you might want it sweeter). SO GLAD I could indulge my love of cranberries today! Thanks for reminding me how easy it is.
Well, that’s not the same recipe at all so it seems strange that you are leaving that as a comment.
I made this recipe for Thanksgiving and it was great! To get a citrus “zing” I used orange extract and about a 1/4 teaspoon of xanthum gum to set it. I did use Swerve (erythritol) for the sweetener (to taste, probably 2-3 Tblsp.) Thanks!
What size is the serving?
Hi
What is the serving size for the carbs listed?
It would be an 1/8th of the recipe. I am not exactly sure how much that is. If you want to be precise, you could weight the whole recipe with a food scale, divide by 8, and each serving can be weighed.
I’m going to make Mexican ground pork stuffing. I used to make another Mexican stuffing, recipe follows.
1 pound butter
1 pound Keto bread cut into small cubes
1 pound broken pecans
1 pound cored, peeled apples, diced
1 pound pitted prunes diced.
The ground pork recipe has capers, apples, raisins, sage, fennel seeds and lots of herbs. Get a pork tenderloin and ask to have it ground. Ralph’s has lean ground pork.
I was thinking of using frozen cranberries and sugar free orange jello not sure if it would be good or not.
How long will it keep?
It should keep at least a week in a sealed container in the fridge.
You should experiment with Pomona’s Pectin. You can gel anything with it, even with NO sugar. I made cranberry sauce and strained out the skins, so it came out jellied. You can use ANY sweetener except Nutrasweet (which you wouldn’t be using anyway lol)
Has anyone tried Splenda for sweetner substitute? If so what was the out come
If you like orange in your cranberry, adding the zest of 1 orange adds a negligible amount of carbs (2.4 instead of 2.3 net carbs) and adds another level of complexity to the flavor.
I should have read the comments before I made it. 🙂 Super easy and my first time making homemade cranberry sauce. It’s a bit tart with the Stevia drops. I will like it as a side to Thanksgiving dinner. I really had no idea cranberry sauce was so easy. Thanks for the other ideas, probably too late to do anything to it. Thanks!
Add some jalapeno and orange zest. So very good!