Home-Canned Cranberry Juice

A tasty glimpse of the holiday season year round

Come November every year, it seems like cranberries are in your face right when you step inside of any store. Often, they’re on sale, and you can get a whole bunch for cheap. I like to do snatch up a good bit of them (but I am always sure to leave plenty for everyone else, too), and I toss them in the freezer. Why? Because typically around all the holidays in November and December I’m just way too busy with other kitchen tasks to think about making cranberry juice.

Then, the first couple weeks of January roll on in, and I’m feeling refreshed and excited to get back to some kitchen projects - so I make us a ton of cranberry juice! It’s such a great way to get myself back into the swing of things without overwhelming myself, since it’s such an easy and fairly quick (in hands-on terms) project.

There really isn’t what I would call a true “recipe” to share here. It’s more of just explaining how to water bath can, which is oh so simple once you try it once or twice. I was so intimidated when I first attempted it this summer, but I found some tweaks that just make it way less scary, to me, at least.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag of Cranberries (or 6oz by weight)

• Water

• 1TBSP - 1/2 cup of Sugar (optional: add however much you prefer. I do some with no sugar for mixed drinks and some with 1/4 or 1/2 cup for straight drinking)

***THIS RECIPE IS WRITTEN PER JAR***

Equipment:

• Large pot (needs to hold enough water to cover your jars by about 2 inches) or Water Bath Canner

• Quart-sized mason jars

• NEW mason jar lids

• Jar lifter

Instructions:

Step 01:

Add your cranberries and sugar (if using) to your jars.

Step 02:

Fill with cool/cold water, leaving about 1 inch of headspace.

Step 03:

Wipe the rims of your jars with a wet washcloth to remove any residue, chunks of cranberry, etc.

Step 04:

Place your lids on the jars, then secure the rings “finger tight” (there are a lot of interpretations of what this means, but here’s how I do it: I take my pointer finger and press down just hard enough that the “button” on the center of the lid stays down while I’m pressing it, then I tighten the ring until the jar rotates on the counter, as well. It should not feel super tight!)

Step 05:

Once all the lids and rings are on, carefully lower your jars into your water bath canner or large pot. Fill the canner with water of similar temperature to the water you used to fill your jars (if you use hot water - your jars might crack & we don’t want that!). Make sure to fill it enough that you have about 2 inches of water above the jars.

Step 06:

Turn the heat on high & let it all heat up together. (I’ve found this much more approachable as a newbie to canning than the traditional way of adding hot water to the jars and quickly getting them into the hot canner water - but if you know what you’re doing and are comfortable with it, go ahead and do it that way!)

Step 07:

Once the water is boiling, set a timer for 25 minutes. Keep an eye on it as it may try and splash out a bit, depending on how full of water it is. Adjust temp as necessary, but make sure it stays at a rolling boil for 25 consecutive minutes.

Step 08:

After the 25 minutes, turn off the heat & let it sit with the lid on for about 5 minutes. Then, get your jar lifter, and carefully remove the hot jars, placing them on a towel on your counter (I usually double up the towel to protect my counters). Make sure your jars aren’t touching, so they have a chance to cool. Let them sit on the counter to cool for at least 12 hours.

Step 09:

Once your 12+ hours are up, remove your rings and attempt to pick up each jar by just the lid. This is to test & make sure they’re sealed. If there are any jars that haven’t sealed, I typically will just re-process them in the canner, since it doesn’t really matter with this if the cranberries get mushy.

Step 10:

Store in a cool, dark place for roughly 6 weeks before cracking it open and tasting it!

We enjoy using this for all sorts of things, but we primarily use it for drinking it straight or mixing it with orange juice (or in mimosas)! The sugar-free versions we use to make the occasional “liquor drinks”, as we call them haha, and you can even use this to make a smooth cranberry jelly or cranberry sauce if you wanted to do so!

Have you ever done water bath canning before? Do you have any questions about it?

As always, I encourage you to send me a message on my Instagram account (@calicocowacres) if you have any recipe questions or need advice while making it. I want my recipes to be something you can adapt and make your own - and I’m happy to help you do it!