Cranberry Salad

Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday. All the food, the family, the traditions, the football, the endless games of Bananagrams (if you haven’t ever played, get yourself the little bag and play till your heart’s content.) In my family, food is the main component.

And not just eating the food, making the food. I come from a long line of cooks. My grandma, my mom, my aunt, my older sister, and I all cook and we love to do so. We make everything from scratch so we often start cooking, well, baking, days in advance. We wake up at the crack of dawn, begin chopping veggies and rolling out pie crusts. To some, that might sound like the worst possible thing. To us, it’s wonderful.

When it comes to traditional recipes, we’re sort of sticklers. We make all the “normal” thanksgiving things but often, put our own twist on things. My grandma has this cranberry salad recipe that puts that scary can of jiggly jelly to shame.

Cranberry Salad

Print Recipe

Cranberry Salad

Ditch the jiggly can of cranberry sauce and give this incredible cranberry salad a go. It's the perfect make-ahead dish and is so full of flavor! Sweet, tart and crunchy. Filled with cranberries, walnuts, oranges, pineapple and celery.

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time20 minutes mins

Total Time30 minutes mins

Servings: 8

Ingredients

Ingredients:

• 1 large package of cherry jello
• 2 cup boiling water
• 1 cup sugar
• juice of one small lemon
• 8 oz fresh cranberries
• 1 large orange
• 3 stalks celery finely chopped
• 1 11 oz can crushed pineapple with juice
• 3/4 cup walnuts chopped

Instructions

Directions:

• Combine the jello mix, 2 cups hot water and 1 cup sugar in large bowl. Stir to dissolve and place in fridge. Let set for 20 minutes.
• In a food processor, add the cranberries and pulse 10-15 times. Then add the orange slices and pulse another 10 times.
• Stir in the celery, lemon juice, pineapple and walnuts.
• Add the cranberry mixture to the partially set jello. Stir to combine and set completely.

The salad comes out not like a smooth jello consistency, but more of a chunky fruit salad. I’m not kidding when I say it is my favorite thing on the Thanksgiving table.

I hope you guys like this recipe as much as I do! It’s so easy and so good. Perfect to bring along with you too if you’re going somewhere for Thanksgiving because it doesn’t need to stay warm! If you cook, you know the struggle is real when it comes to keeping everything warm right up until you eat.

As always, tag me @tessa_port if you make this. I hope it becomes part of your Thanksgiving meal traditions!