Low-sugar cranberry sauce with pears

Cranberries are brazenly tart, which is why so much sugar is added to cranberry sauce recipes. However, it's possible to make a low sugar cranberry sauce that still tastes great.

Traditional cranberry sauce recipes use 1 cup of sugar and more modern recipes use a half cup. This pear cranberry sauce uses only a quarter cup.

How do you make cranberry sauce with less sugar still enjoyable?

The first trick is to mix the cranberries with a sweet fruit, like pears. This significantly cuts down on the tartness without added sugar. In fact, pears account for 30% of the fruit in this cranberry pear sauce.

The second trick has to do with the chemistry required to thicken cranberry sauce. As more liquid is used when cooking, more sugar is required to prevent a runny sauce. This recipe uses less water (juice) at the start which allows for a low sugar cranberry sauce.

Jump to:

• Recipe
• Low sugar cranberry sauce with pears
• Whole cranberries
• Pears
• Low sugar
• Thickening (or thinning) cranberry sauce
• Fixing bitter flavors
• Serving sizes
• Nutrition
• More recipes & resources

Recipe

Whole cranberries

Fresh, whole cranberries usually show up in stores in October (or the very end of September if you are lucky!) Look for bags with plump cranberries that are light to dark red.

The difference in color indicates how ripe it is from harvest. Lighter red berries were picked at maturity, but not fully ripe. Maturity means they met certain conditions for harvesting, whereas ripeness indicates its quality for consumption.

Ripe cranberries will bounce, thanks to the air pockets inside. Unfortunately, that doesn't help you select them in the store - a whole bag of cranberries will not bounce back at you. Too bad, that would be fun!

Cranberries have turned bad if you see signs of wrinkled skin, juice accumulating in the bag, or they smell sour.

Storing & freezing

Whole cranberries store really well in the fridge, easily lasting a month, but sometimes two months if they were fresh when you bought them. Some individual berries might start to deteriorate after a few weeks, and bruised ones can turn bad quickly.

Cranberries can also be frozen - just pop the entire bag in the freezer and that's it!

Pears

My favorite pears to use in cranberry sauce are Bartlett or Anjou pears, but any softer variety works great.

Bartlett pears will likely have green skin when you buy them, which turns yellow as they ripen on your counter. Anjou pears won't change color as they ripen, but will still soften.

For cranberry sauce, use pears that haven't fully ripened. They hold up better when cooked, but still soften to a perfect consistency.

It's easy to buy pears that aren't fully ripe but still have good flavor. That's because they are one of the few fruits that need to be picked early and ripened off the tree. If left to fully ripen on the tree, they turn mealy (a fact I accidentally confirmed with my own pear tree).

I don't buy the crunchier types of pears for cranberry sauce because they don't soften as much when cooked. They add a noticeable crunchy texture and I happen to think cranberry sauce should be soft. But if you disagree - go ahead and grab some Asian pears.

Bake from Scratch has a guide that's worth reading: "Perfect 'Pear'ings: The Secrets to Choosing the Right Pear for Baking." I actually subscribe to the magazine and recommend it to everyone who enjoys baking.

Low sugar

Traditional recipes, like the classic from Ocean Spray, use 1 cup of sugar for each 12 ounce bag of cranberries and more modern recipes cut that down to a half-cup. The sugar is used to combat the fruit's natural tart-sour flavor.

"To say a fresh cranberry is sour is like saying Paris is a nice town. In fact it (the berry, not Paris) can have a lower pH value than stomach acid."

Paul J. Hetzler from St. Lawrence University

My recipe is very low sugar, using only ¼ cup per 12 ounce bag. Let me make a case for why this cranberry sauce is actually better with less sugar.

Pears add sweetness

Since this is a cranberry pear sauce, it isn't as tart out of the gate. The pears add a fair amount of sweetness without tartness. In fact, pears make up about 30% of the fruit (by weight) in this cranberry sauce recipe.

• 1 pear weighs about 5 ounces: 30%
• 1 bag of cranberries weighs 12 ounces: 70%

Apples also add natural sweetness to cranberry sauce, but also some tart flavors depending on the variety. If you're interested in using apples, look for ones that are sweeter, or tarter, based on your preferences.

Better flavor

Using the right amount of sugar is a balancing act. It enhances certain flavors and masks others (like bitter or tart flavors). Use too little sugar, and a recipe might be bland or too tart. Use too much and all you get is a sweet treat without much depth.

Any cranberry sauce with added flavors should use less sugar if you want those flavors to come through. If this cranberry pear sauce used a full cup of sugar, you wouldn't taste the pears at all.

Too much sugar also hides the subtleties of cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, and cardamom. You'd have to add more of those spices to compete with the sugar.

Low sugar is better for Thanksgiving & Christmas

I think that the tarter cranberry sauce is, the better it compliments the richness of Thanksgiving and Christmas side dishes.

It cuts through mashed potatoes mixed with a ton of delicious butter and heavy cream, balances creamy & salty green bean casseroles, and cuts through the sugary marshmallow topping of sweet potatoes.

Let the pumpkin, pecan, and apple pies have enough sugar for dessert!

Thickening (or thinning) cranberry sauce

Cranberry sauce thickens when three things interact: pectin, acid, and sugar. They work together to gel the watery parts of the cranberry sauce.

Cranberries are naturally high in pectin, a substance responsible for the gelling effect of jams and jellies. Cranberries are acidic enough to help pectin do its work, but they don't have enough sugar.

Without any added sugar, cranberry sauce will be runny (unless you add other thickening agents or store-bought gelatin for low-sugar applications). So we still need to use a little sugar in this recipe.

Why my recipe works

Sugar helps pectin work by attracting away some of the water. That means if we add less water (or juice) to begin with, we can use less sugar and still get a thick cranberry sauce.

The secret to this recipe is that I only use ¼ cup of liquid per 12-ounce bag of cranberries. That's significantly less than most recipes, which use 1 cup of water. 1 cup is a lot of unnecessary liquid that you either need to cook off or thicken with more sugar.

Water (or another liquid) is only necessary to keep the cranberries from scorching on the bottom of the pan until they break open and release their own juices. Beyond that, more liquid isn't necessary.

I've found that ¼ of a cup of sugar is just enough to get the sauce to thicken.

It won't be gelled like canned cranberry sauce and it won't be as thick as an apple butter. But it also shouldn't be runny - it can be scooped onto a plate (instead of a bowl).

A lot of trusted resources suggest a minimum of a ½ cup of sugar to get cranberry sauce to thicken. This is correct in the context that most recipes use 1 cup of water.

Eating Well suggests this, which is the correct advice for their recipe that uses 1 cup of water. More sugar is required because of how it interacts with the water. The pectin needs more help to gel so much more liquid, and additional sugar provides that help.

Testing thickness

All cranberry sauces thicken as they cool, and thicken even further after a day in the fridge. If you've ever made jam, you might have tested its 'setting property' by spreading some on a plate that has chilled in the freezer - it's because the pectin continues to gel as it cools.

You can use the same trick for cranberry sauce. Before you start on the recipe, place a plate in the freezer. When you're done cooking the cranberry pear sauce, place a little bit on the plate, wait a minute, and see if it starts to set. If it does, you should have a perfect batch after it sits in the fridge.

Make it thicker or thinner

If your low sugar cranberry sauce doesn't set at all, you can cook it another 5-10 minutes to release more pectin if not all of the berries have popped. You can also try adding a little more sugar while it's still warm in the pan.

Thinning cranberry sauce is much easier: just add a liquid. I prefer apple juice for this recipe, but water will also work. Avoid stirring in alcohols at this point (like brandy, bourbon or wine) because the bitter alcohol flavor won't have a chance to cook off.

Fixing bitter flavors

Cranberry sauce can turn bitter for one of several reasons: overcooking, bitterness from oranges, and cooking with wine. This recipe doesn't use oranges or wine, so let's stick with the overcooking part.

Cook cranberry sauce until most of the cranberries have burst open, and then remove it from the heat. This usually takes 10-15 minutes. You can probably cook it an extra 5 minutes or so and be fine, but if you let it simmer for 30+ minutes, there's a good chance it turns bitter.

If you're interested in how oranges and wine can turn cranberry sauce bitter and how to fix it, check out this guide.

How to fix it

In order to know how to fix bitter cranberry sauce, we turn to other naturally bitter foods. Sugar makes coffee less bitter, salt improves dark chocolate, and acidic ingredients balance bitter salad greens.

Sugar

Sugar is the first ingredient most people reach for to fix bitter flavors. Since this cranberry pear sauce is already low-sugar, adding a little more to fix bitter flavors works out well.

Vinegar

Traditional homemade cranberry sauce recipes typically call for 1 cup of sugar, so I advise against adding sugar to recipes like that. Instead, try adding a pinch of salt or a splash of vinegar.

I prefer champagne or white wine vinegar. Even a balsamic vinegar will work, but be cautious of the flavor it adds (could be great or not what you're looking for). I have a pear-cinnamon balsamic vinegar that is amazing in cranberry sauce!

Fat

While not traditional, you can also add a couple tablespoons of butter to balance out any bitter flavors.

Serving sizes

Most sources recommend a minimum of ¼ cup of cranberry sauce per person, but I've found that isn't nearly enough. Picture ¼ of a cup, it really isn't that much! Leftovers also last 1-2 weeks in the fridge and freeze well, so I see no reason to cut it close!

If you want to play it safe, aim for a ½ cup per person. Making cranberry sauce at home with a 12-ounce bag of cranberries will usually yield between 2 and 2.5 cups of sauce when using a standard recipe, or 2.5 to 3 cups for this cranberry pear sauce.

Every year I make a triple batch for 10 people and have just a couple of small servings leftover. I then make another batch for myself for leftovers. Maybe I'll learn this year and just start with a quadruple batch.

Nutrition

Cranberry sauce recipes are all very similar, when you boil them down (pun intended). The main ingredient that affects calories is added sugar.

In order to fairly compare nutrition across recipes, we need to use the same serving size. Some consider a half cup a single serving (like my recipe), others go as low as 2 tablespoon per serving (like Eating Well).

For the purpose of this comparison, let's define one serving as a ½ cup. Below is a list of how much added sugar is in each serving of various cranberry sauce recipes:

• My low-sugar cranberry sauce: 2 teaspoon per serving
• Eating Well cranberry sauce: 4 teaspoon per serving (½ cup per recipe)
• NYT cranberry sauce: 2 tablespoon per serving (¾ cup per recipe)
• Ocean Spray cranberry sauce: 2 tablespoon + 2 teaspoon per serving (1 cup per recipe)

To really compare nutrition, just look at the amount of sugar used (per bag of cranberries).

More recipes & resources

If you love cranberry sauce, be sure to check out the different recipes I've collected for you in the guide "Cranberry sauce recipes: boozy, fruits, floral, and spicy."

For anytime other than Thanksgiving, I've also collected cranberry recipes for every other day of the season.

Try one of my other favorite Thanksgiving recipes worth making from scratch: a green bean casserole with fresh green beans, mushrooms and shallots. Or the make-ahead green bean casserole version (same recipe, make-ahead instructions).