I’m still chipping away at the 15-pound box of fresh cranberries that I bought from the farmers market. I’ve already made cranberry apple jam, cranberry apple butter, and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving – all recipes can be found in my cookbooks. Other recipes that I have yet to make but can also be found in my books include cranberries infused in honey, fermented cranberry relish, and infused cranberry vodka. I love preserving with cranberries, if you can’t tell.

Cranberry season is fleeting so we must make the most of it while we have the opportunity. Unlike the shrub recipes in my cookbooks, I cook this one to help extract the juice from the berries.

Festive Cranberry Shrub

Yield: 2.5 cups finished shrub

Ingredients

2 cups fresh cranberries

1.5 cups white granulated sugar

1 cup orange juice

To finish off after making syrup: about 1.5 cups raw organic apple cider vinegar (or other drinking vinegar of choice).

Directions

Rinse cranberries, remove any white or damaged berries and stems. In a medium sized saucepan, bring the cranberries, orange juice, and sugar to a simmer. Simmer until the berries begin to pop and cook and become soft and deflated. Stir often.

The syrup will become bright red once it’s ready to strain. Keep an eye on the pot as it simmers – it is a syrup and will get hot and bubble over if not carefully watched and stirred down.

Once the sugar has dissolved and a syrup is made, use a fine mesh strainer to strain out the solids, reserving the syrup in a heat tolerant measuring cup. Use a spoon to stir out the juice from the solids. Double strain for a cleaner/clearer syrup (optional).

Once strained, measure the amount of cranberry syrup that was collected and add that same amount of vinegar to the syrup (it will be about 1-1.5 cups of vinegar), stir well to mix.

Store in a clean jar with lid tightened on and refrigerate. Enjoy within a few months for best flavor.

To serve

Mix about a shot (1-2 ounces) of the shrub mixture with water, or carbonated water. Serve over ice. Shrubs also make tasty and unique cocktail mixers. This bright red shrub is perfect to serve over the holidays (my photo doesn’t do the color justice).

Side notes

You can also use brown sugar, coconut sugar, maple syrup, or other sugar alternative in place of white granulated sugar.

This method of shrub making can be applied to any fruits and herb combinations. Consider adding orange zest, ground cinnamon or rosemary while simmering the syrup.

Don’t toss the strained-out fruit solids! The solids are delicious mixed into plain yogurt, oatmeal, or blended into a smoothie. You can also process them in a food processor and make a tasty fruit leather!

Cranberry fruit leather made from leftover shrub solids.

This recipe was adapted from WECK Small-Batch Preserving (2018) with permission from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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