I grew up on store-bought, canned cranberry sauce, the kind you sorta plunk out onto a plate and serve in slices. I love that stuff.

At some point, I decided to see how easy it was to make cranberry sauce myself. Turns out? It’s really easy. I’m certain there are many ways you can make it smoother, more nuanced, fancier, etc., but the basic recipe is: cook some cranberries with some sugar. More specifically, here’s what I just did:

Spiced Cranberry Sauce

• 4 cups fresh cranberries, picked over and rinsed
• 2 cups sugar*
• zest of 3 tangerines (or 1 orange, or…)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 cloves

Put everything in a sauce pan with a bit (1/2 cup or maybe less) of water and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until boiling. Reduce the heat and simmer until the cranberries mostly burst (or a bit longer if you like your cranberry sauce extra thick). Done.

Store in the refrigerator or can** like other fruit jams.

This yielded 3 and 1/2 cups. Would have been 4 if I’d cooked it down less.

*That’s 2 parts fruit, 1 part sugar, which just happens to be my standard jam ratio.

**I can mine, because I tend to travel for Thanksgiving and having it sealed makes that easier. This stuff will keep almost forever, though, so it’s not necessary unless you’ll be away from a refrigerator for a while or want a good seal.