(You know I like to put these questions forth to you, my lovely blog readers, because I trust your intelligence and knowledge implicitly, right?)
As I was discussing with tripleindemnity, I am thinking about making cranberry sauce from scratch for Thanksgiving. Why is another great question, because my family likes the crap in the can, but again, that's neither here nor there. My real question is thus:
I looked up how to do this in How to Cook Everything, my fall-back resource for instructions and recipes for basic things that I don't know how to do or make. It said to use 1 1/2 cups sugar, or 2 cups sugar if you want it thicker. So am I right to deduce from this that there is something in the chemical properties of the sugar that makes the sauce gel, and that it would be impossible to substitute splenda for some or all of it?
xoxo
5 comments:
it's the pectin in the fruit, reacting with the sugar, that makes it gel. with splenda you need to add a low-methoxyl pectin to the mix. results are unpredictable and not all that good.
most jelly recipes you can substantially reduce the sugar with no harm done. why not use the real stuff and some orange zest? how the hell much cranberry sauce will you really eat? it's thanksgiving, not food science class.
Or just open the fricken can. But I'm prejudiced because I like the jellied kind. If you wanted to duplicate that from scratch, you're already about a day too late, and anyway, you have a life outside the kitchen.
Pectin + sugar= gel. Check.
(I'm sure at some point in my life I knew what pectin was, but that information has apparently been replaced by crucial knowledge like how to spell all the atypical antipsychotics, the lyrics to Academy Fight Song, and what Amy Winehouse's husband got arrested for.)
And I *can't* just open the fricken can. I already bought the cranberries. I'm committed to this course of action now. :-)
So, did your cranberries gel by T-Day?
Or did you have to make a quick run to the canned goods store?
BTW, I've never much understood the connection between cranberries and turkey. I assume cranberries are harvested late in the fall or something, so that's why they end up in a late November meal as separate items. But why do those who are creating a yuppie turkey sandwich always combining it with cranberries?
Now my perplexation [a non-word that really should exist] is mostly caused by the fact that I mostly never like sweet meat (I don't like sweet and sour, I don't like sweet bbq sauces, etc) but still, that cran/turkey combination seems all wrong to me: like pastrami and mayonnaise together on a sandwich. Good individually, not good together.
Oh, damn. Did I forget to report back?
The cranberry sauce took 10 minutes to make from scratch, and it was tart and fresh and delicious. Definitely worth doing.
I think the turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce started because some people do that with T-day leftovers. Not me, but I've heard.
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