Would you serve frozen turkey roll heated in a microwave to guests?

No. No, you would not. Proper Thanksgiving tradition calls for a bespoke meal – gravy made from turkey drippings in a cast-iron skillet, stuffing made from toasted and hand-torn bread, a freshly roasted golden-brown bird, and casserole made from canned soup, green beans and fried onions. Well, three out of four ain’t bad.

Yet people buy millions of tons of canned cranberry sauce to serve to guests. This is not only sad but also very, very wrong. We serve beloved family members ¹ who have journeyed hours to be with us food the color of a late-stage diabetic’s bloated limb. It slides out of the can and flops into a serving dish like dog food.

It sits there in the bowl in a watery purple puddle still the shape of the container it came in. If there is any food you could serve to your guests that says “I give zero fucks” more than this I’m not sure what it would be. Twinkies? Slim Jims?

Despite all this evidence, often people say that they prefer canned sauce to homemade. Naturally everyone is a little bit different and we must cater to our guests’ wishes and accept that people have their own taste preferences, but people who prefer canned sauce are wrong and stupid.

If I ever come to power among my first acts after calling George Lucas to account for his many crimes would be to outlaw canned cranberry sauce.

Thanks to makers of cranberry sauce – “Big Cranberry” – people are convinced that cranberry sauce is a mystical substance, as difficult and as complicated to pull off as a souffle or baked Alaska. Yet, proper cranberry sauce is by far the easiest part of the meal to prepare, far easier than gravy or even mashed potatoes. ³

Here is the basic two-step recipe for making homemade cranberry sauce:

• Buy a bag of cranberries.
• Follow the instructions on the bag.

However, I prefer to put my spin on the recipe.

• One bag of fresh cranberries
• 1 cup of orange juice
• 1 cup of sugar
• A pinch of cloves
• About 1/4 tsp. or so of cinnamon. ²

Put the sugar, juice and spices into a saucepan. Bring to a vigorous boil. Dump in the cranberries. Bring back to a boil. The berries will pop and reduce to sauce. After about 10 minutes your sauce should be done.

Press it through a strainer if you are one of those weird people who don’t want the skins.

You will have several cups of beautiful crimson red cranberry sauce and a house filled with the lovely smell of cranberries and spices. You can’t get that out of a can.

1. I’m using a very loose definition of the word “beloved.”
2. I never measure spices. I just put some in.
3. Which you are also probably making wrong.