Skip to main content
Jim Dixon wrote about food for WW for more than 20 years, but these days most of his time is spent at his olive oil-focused specialty food business Wellspent Market. Jim’s always loved to eat, and he encourages his customers to cook by sending them recipes every week through his newsletter. We’re happy to have him back creating some special dishes just for WW readers.
When I was growing up in Roseburg, my Thanksgiving job was cranking a meat grinder clamped to the kitchen counter to make cranberry-orange relish from the recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray bag. The deep red berries would pop as they were crushed against the grinding plate by the augur screw; the oranges, cut into wedges so they’d fit into the hopper, weren’t as noisy but produced lots of juice. I rolled dish towels into makeshift dams that channeled the growing lake of sticky drippings into a bowl on the floor.
When we sat down for turkey, the relish joined a cranberry lineup that included a sauce made from canned cranberries doctored up with whatever trendy ingredient my mother had read about that year and, of course, slices of the jellied version. Maybe it was because I’d done all that grinding, but the relish was always my favorite, and since my picky-eating younger self only ate the dry breast meat, the sweet, tart and slightly acidic relish made it nearly edible.
Mom was an early adopter when it came to kitchen tech, and she had a Cuisinart not long after they were introduced in the early 1970s. I was off to college by then, but when I came home for the holidays I loved how the food processor made my old favorite in a matter of seconds. And while I rarely roast a whole turkey anymore, I still make cranberry-orange relish every November. I’ll eat it with yogurt or plain by the spoonful, and if I do cook any turkey (usually just thighs), I make sure there’s enough for sandwiches because the combination of leftover turkey, mayo, and that relish is magic.
Recipe
1 12-ounce bag cranberries (about 3 cups)
1 blood orange*
½ cup sugar
Shot of bourbon, optional
*I like the acidity of blood oranges, but any orange will work
Leave the orange unpeeled, cut it in half from top to bottom, then cut slices about ½ inch thick. Remove any seeds since they can make the relish bitter.
Combine the orange slices, cranberries, sugar and bourbon in the food processor. Pulse a few times, then process until the fruit is finely chopped. Transfer to a container with a lid and, if possible, refrigerate overnight. Serve chilled alongside turkey or other roasted meat, add to yogurt, or eat with a spoon.
