This past weekend, I made a delicious Garlic Rosemary Pork Roast with Cranberry Apple Pear Sauce. It was the perfect fall combination and a big hit with everyone. The kids especially liked the cranberry apple pear sauce and the leftover sauce was a perfect addition to lunchboxes on Monday.
The sauce is pretty flexible in that you really can use any proportion of the three fruits. I used a smaller amount of cranberries to give the sauce a little tartness, but not so tart that it needed sugar. It was nice to be able to make something with cranberries and not load up on sugar.
To get started, I quartered 5 apples and 3 pears and removed the stems/cores. A neat little trick I learned about selecting pears is to press the pear just near the stem. If it is a little soft, then the pear is ripe. I was pretty happy to learn this tip after eating and cooking with too many hard pears.
I added the apples and pears to a stock pot along with about 1/2 cup of water. A little water keeps the fruit from sticking to the bottom.
I covered the pot and let the fruit simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes. When the fruit is mushy, it’s done.
I left the peels on the fruit, so once it was cooked, I put it in the blender to smooth it out and pulverize the peels. Then, I added the mixture back to the pot and stirred in the cranberries. Also worth mentioning is that cranberries freeze really well, especially if you are going to cook with them. I often pick up a couple of bags when they are on sale around Thanksgiving and toss them right in the freezer to use at a later time. I used frozen cranberries in this recipe and just tossed them in as if they were fresh.
When the cranberries start to cook, they will pop and get kind of mushy. The sauce will start to turn a little red from all the juice. I like the texture that the cranberries give to the sauce. If you were peeling the apples and pears, you could probably skip the blending step and leave the apples a little chunky or if you don’t like the texture of the cranberries, then you could blend all the fruits.
This sauce is really versatile – tastes great over pork or chicken, stands alone as a snack or lunchbox treat, or spoon over vanilla ice cream or yogurt for a sweet treat.
Cranberry Apple Pear Sauce
Ingredients
- 4-5 apples quartered and cored
- 2-3 pears quartered and cored
- 1/2 cup cranberries fresh or frozen
- 1/2 cup water
Instructions
- Add the apples, pears, and water to a sauce pan.
- Cover and simmer over low for about 30 minutes.
- Blend until smooth and return to pan.
- Add the cranberries and continue to cook on low until cranberries are heated through and "pop."
- Mix well.
- Serve warm or refrigerate.