If you live in the Toronto area and looking for something healthy and inspiring to do this Sunday afternoon, check out my Healthy Meal Prep Workshop. Now on with the Cranberry Lesson
Cranberries are beautiful, but boy do they pack a mean sour punch. We usually have our cranberries in the form of sauce where it has been boiled down with heaps of sugar, or dried as a tasty and handy snack. Sometimes we’ll have cranberries in the form of juice, and many then have this juice mixed vodka, lime and ice and give it a sweet fancy urban chic name- The Cosmopolitan.
We have all heard about how healthy cranberries are. They are not, however, healthy in any of the aforementioned ways- yes, dried included.
The health benefits of cranberries are rather astounding. Like their cousin the blueberry, they are powered up with anti-oxidants. They are most well known for their ability to treat and prevent urinary tract and bladder infections and have also been linked to preventing kidney stones, lowering cholesterol, helping gastro disorders and even preventing stroke and some cancers.
With that said, when was the last time you ate a hardy handful of fresh cranberries? The answer is likely never. Why? Because these radiant red berries are the tartest, sourest little devils.
Just after the holidays, cranberries were on sale everywhere. I bought four bags and stuck them in my freezer with the plan that I would dehydrate them myself and have fresh dried cranberries without any preservatives or sweeteners.
I finally got around to doing this. I defrosted them, soaked them for about 4 hours in raw agave nectar (they needed some sweetness right?), sliced them in half, spread them out on a dehydrator tray, stuck them in my dehydrator and left them alone.
Eight hours later, they were done. So exciting. I took a handful and popped them in my mouth and holy Dinah! SOUR. They were little pellets of sour.
What did I learn from this? The sweet treat dried cranberries we buy at the store are saturated in sugar- whether from regular sugar or apple juice sweetened- they are sugar infused. There are so many other naturally sweet dried fruits available that I think cranberries may have become excommunicated from my cupboard.
But wait… they are healthy. Right. So if you want the urinary/bladder/kidney/stroke/cancer prevention benefits here is how I suggest you eat them:
1. Frozen cranberries mixed in with a smoothie
2. Juiced and mixed with some sweeter juices, or down as a shot
3. Throw a handful in to your porridge in the morning and cook them together.
4. Cook them into muffins or breads
Any other ideas?
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It never occurred to me that dried cranberries are full of sugar (I say glancing sideways at the fruit sitting in my oatmeal). I may never buy dried cranberries again.
I like the way that cranberries burst in your mouth when you take a bite of a cranberry muffin.
how about taking advantage of the tartness and making it into a marinade for meats? like, say, chicken, or ham, or even….turkey? (hmm…wonder where i got that idea!) i’m thinking…blend a handful of cranberries with a bit of olive oil, a splash of white grape juice, a dash of cinnamon and some other ‘warm’ spices such as ginger or cloves and coat a few pieces of chicken with the mixture. let it sit for a few hours and then toss it in the oven to bake? mind you, i’ve never tried this, but i think it might work. (after all, marinades are nothing but acid+oil+seasoning, right?) of course, you wouldn’t get the benefits of raw cranberries, but it’s a start… or how about a nice tart cranberry vinigrette? i’ve always loathed the overly-sweet raspberry salad dressings that are touted as ‘low fat’…but not low sugar! i like my salad dressings to be nice and tart, so perhaps cranberries could be blended with a nice, nutty oil and a smidge of honey into a healthy dressing?
p.s. although your dried cranberry experiment didn’t turn out the way you liked it, i have to say, i loooove the photos! the first two, in particular, look like pictures of lovely (but terribly UNhealthy!:p) maraschino cherries. such vibrant colour! and brilliant lighting!
NO way! I am totally going to try to do this, perhaps, maybe yes, yes I will!
Thanks for sharing your less-than successful cranberry experiment. I’d recently noticed the amount of sugar in dried cranberries, and I’d been contemplating trying this myself. Lack of food dehydrator was the only thing holding me back. Now that I know what the results are like, I can save my pennies a bit longer. Mind you, I like the tartness of raw cranberries, and put them in my oatmeal daily. I also like unsweetened cranberry juice. Strange, I know. I eat raw rhubarb too.
Received my prize granola in the mail this week. It’s wonderful. Many thanks, and much success with that endeavor. Certainly beats the heck out of Pop Tarts!
[...] Pear, Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Pineapple, Papaya, Mango, Pomegranate, Cranberries, Kiwifruit, Figs, Watermelon, Lemon, Carrots, Sweet Potato, [...]
I have always been scared of the amount of sugar product going into every kind of dried fruit product, so I tried the cranberry thing on my own this past year. No dehydrator here, I did it the old way and -warning- it took a LONG time. Wash your cranberries and put them into a bowl, cover them with fresh boiled water and wait a few minutes while the skin pop open. It’s neat to hear. While waiting, I turned my oven to 200F for 10 minutes and then off. Drain your berries, and instead of soaking the cranberries I coated them with a mixture of honey and a touch of olive oil (for spreading consistency). In the oven spread out on a sheet overnight and voila! Or so I thought. Texture wasn’t consistent through ALL of the berries and it took about three times as long as estimated to dry them. But flavour wise I was really happy with the results. I am plain though, I really only heart cranberries in salad or baked into stuff.
They do don’t they. Bring on the Shirley Temple (I think that was the last time I had a maraschino cherry and I was likely about 6). And thank you for your brilliant cranberry suggestion. I don’t tend to cook any meat but am definitely going to pass that suggestion along. Thanks!