Pineapple Orange Cranberry Sauce

This easy homemade Pineapple Orange Cranberry Sauce is the perfect combination of sweet and tart with a hint of vanilla. It's a must-have Thanksgiving side dish that is sure to be a hit!

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If you've never made homemade cranberry sauce, you should definitely give it a try this Thanksgiving. It's quick and easy to make, and the taste is so, so, so much better than anything you can get in a can.

Plus, you can make it advance - so one less thing to do on the big day!

I made traditional cranberry sauce for years. You've got to have it in on your Thanksgiving table, right? It's a classic.

The thing was, there might be one or two people who took a spoonful (nope, I was not one of them), and that was it. The bowl would sit there lonely, full and forgotten.

But why? It was homemade, and it looked so beautiful with that deep red color and bits of cranberries.

For me, it was the super sharp tartness of the cranberries that kept me away. I figured it was probably the same for everyone else who passed it by.

Well, I wasn't going to stop making it - I can be stubborn like that - so I decided to change it up a bit and make a cranberry sauce that everyone would want to eat!

I started with fresh cranberries. You can usually find them in the grocery store at this time of the year, but frozen cranberries will also work if that's all you can find.

Instead of water, I used orange juice to cook the cranberries, along with some sugar to sweeten things up. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is always best (as long as the oranges are ripe and sweet - you don't want to add to the tartness here), but you can absolutely use bottled orange juice (I often do).

After the cranberries burst and got slightly thick, I stirred in a can of crushed pineapple (my favorite fruit) and a splash of vanilla.

And we have ourselves a winner here - a sweeter, more mellow cranberry sauce that is absolutely delicious, like I-wanna-eat-a-spoonful-just-because-it's-so-good delicious!

This is the cranberry sauce that made me LOVE cranberry sauce, and now it disappears off my Thanksgiving table!

Keep in mind that the cranberry sauce will thicken quite a bit more as it cools and chills, so you don't want to cook it until it is very thick. 10 minutes should do the trick, just until the cranberries have burst and the mixture has reduced and thickened slightly.

I mash my cranberries after they cook because I prefer a less chunky sauce, but if you would rather more of a whole-cranberry cranberry sauce, go ahead and leave them as is.

This cranberry sauce definitely benefits from chilling out in the refrigerator for a while before serving. The flavors really blend and come together, everything mellows out, and it just gets better.

I recommend making it ahead of time - at least several hours, but the day before is even better (bonus: one less thing to do the day of!).

You can also make it way ahead of time and freeze it! After it cools completely, put it in a freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as possible, and then freeze up to 2 months. Just thaw it out in the refrigerator the day before Thanksgiving, and you'll be good to go!

If you have any cranberry sauce left over, it's great on leftover turkey sandwiches (a grilled turkey, cranberry, and brie sandwich is amazing!), or you can put it in muffins, quick breads, make cranberry oatmeal bars, add it to smoothies, or swirl it into oatmeal or yogurt. Lots of possibilities!

And if you'd rather just a simple, classic cranberry sauce, check out my Easy Homemade Cranberry Sauce recipe (it's made with just 3 ingredients).

More Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes to Try

If you make this recipe, I'd love to know how it went! Please leave a comment and star rating below. Thanks!

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