Cranberries

Our Pick of the Week post is coming early this week – instead of its usual Wednesday slot – so you have more time to prepare for the big day. We figured by Wednesday your focus will have moved beyond market runs and you’ll be in full-blown prep work mode!

Before signing up with my CSA box, the only cranberries I’d encountered came in an Ocean Spray package. Turns out there’s a good reason. According to Wikipedia, about 95% of cranberries are processed into products such as juice drinks, sauce, and sweetened dried cranberries. The remaining 5% is sold fresh to consumers. Luckily for the small group of fresh cranberry buyers, the market’s supply of tart, red berries runs from October through December, just in time for all of our festive holiday meals.

• How to Pick: Look for bright red berries with no bruises. In order to harvest cranberries, growers can either use a “wet” or “dry” method, with the vast majority using the the “wet” version. According to Cape Cod Travel: “This method involves flooding the bogs where the cranberries grow and then using a water reel, known to growers as an egg beater, that moves through the flooded bogs beating the water to knock the ripened berries off the vines. As the egg beater moves through the bogs it is careful not to crush the vines, preserving them for the next harvest. After the berries are off the vines, they float to the surface and workers connect miles of yellow tubing, called a boom, which corrals the berries into a conveyor belt.”
• How to Store: Keep refrigerated in a perforated plastic bag. They are very hardy and will keep for weeks in the fridge, and will keep even longer if frozen.
• How to Prepare: Most people don’t pop a cranberry in their mouth straight from the market as they are extremely tart.  They are wonderful in chutneys and served over roasted meats and their tartness goes well in desserts and baked goods.
• Recipe Ideas: Smitten Kitchen’s Meyer Lemon and Fresh Cranberry Scones;  David Lebovitz’s Cranberry Raisin Pie; our Apple-Cranberry Chutney; and check back tomorrow for Jillian’s Cranberry Relish recipe just in time for Thanksgiving.
• Fun Fact: The cranberry is one of only a handful of major fruits native to North America. Others include the blueberry (cranberry’s cousin) and Concord grape. And today, Americans consume some 400 million pounds of cranberries each year, 20 percent of that during Thanksgiving week!

Tagged as: chutney, cranberries, Pick of the Week, scone