Nicholas Gavin is the Culinary Creative Director of ChefSteps, where he develops recipes and is responsible for making all the food look beautiful. Nick has worked at ChefSteps for over a decade; he and ChefSteps co-founder Grant Crilly worked together at Modernist Cuisine. Nick has worked in professional kitchens both in the United States and abroad, most notably at Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain.

Nicholas Gavin

Making cranberry sauce is very simple: Cook some cranberries, sugar, and some warm spices together, and you’ve got something that’s perfectly acceptable to serve on Turkey Day.And yet there are a few things you can do to make a cranberry sauce that’s great. I think that the texture of your run-of-the-mill cranberry sauce is a little lacking, so I incorporate the flesh of a couple of oranges into it, which amplifies the fruitiness of the sauce, gives it a mellower sweetness, and improves the final texture significantly. A little liqueur bumps up the aromatic complexity, as the alcohol extracts and holds onto some of the more volatile aromatic compounds in the orange, cranberries, and cinnamon.To add even more texture, flavor, and aroma to the sauce, I garnish it with pistachios and finely grated orange zest. While optional, I think it’s worth the extra bit of effort. It also doesn’t hurt to have a visual indication, aside from the fact that this sauce isn’t a ribbed tower of jelly set on a plate, that this is wildly different—and better—than the stuff from the can.

Perfect Cranberry Sauce