A Holiday Recipe: Cranberry-Apple Chutney

If you are hosting a holiday dinner or looking for a dish to bring to someone else’s house over the holidays, this Cranberry-Apple Chutney would be perfect!  I don’t know about you but we grew up eating the jellied cranberry sauce that comes in a can.  This is what was always served alongside turkey or ham at all of our holiday dinners.  My mom still loves the stuff because she says it’s the best choice for spreading on a sandwich with the leftover turkey or ham 🙂 

This cranberry chutney is not really even in the same category as the jellied cranberry sauce because of the chunky texture with whole cranberries and bite-sized pieces of apple and all of the added spices.  So, all of the diehard lovers of jellied cranberry sauce (love ya, Mom!) can still feel free to serve their canned sauce at your family’s holiday dinner.  And while this chutney may not be the obvious choice for a sandwich spread, we have found that it does lend itself nicely to a creative oatmeal or yogurt topping at breakfast or a tart but sweet accompaniment to a small bowl of ice cream after dinner.  So even though this makes a large batch, you will have no problems using up the leftovers!

Around Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually the only time of year that you will see fresh cranberries for sale in our part of the country.  So, every year, I stock up on fresh cranberries over the holidays and freeze them so that I can use them throughout the year.  I love using them again for a side dish at our family Easter meal, usually in a recipe for chunky cranberry sauce. 

This is the first time I have ever used the cranberries in a chutney and I ended up creating my own recipe because I wasn’t quite happy with any of the ones that I found online.  The first one I found used corn syrup, which I haven’t cooked with in about 10 years.  Others had too few ingredients for me.  I really wanted to include apples since they are still in season and we can get them from a local orchard.  I also really wanted to spice things up with lots of bold flavors.  So I cobbled together this recipe and really loved the results!  I hope that you get a chance to try it over the holidays and share it with your family or friends! 

AuthorMaria

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