If Rødkål:
One made with pomegranate juice (which I’ve seen in groceries in the last year): Reddit - Dive into anything
https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/eorlvn/danish_red_cabbage_or_rodkaal/
Wife says it’s not Rødkål but a somewhat similar variation.
Exact Recipe:
3 Small Heads Red Cabbage
1½ Cup Vinegar
2 cups Sugar
(1) 12oz can Cranberry/Raspberry Frozen Concentrate
Chop cabbage into small pieces
Combine All ingredients in large pan
Cover and simmer on low heat for about six hours or until tender
And, that’s it. Sue generally doubles or triples the recipe then packages and freezes half to 2/3 of the result for next year and the year after. Stuff seems to keep indefinitely. She’s doing a double batch this year, that’s why we’re looking for 2 cans of what is now apparently a unicorn.
Probably should have put this recipe in the OP to save some of the speculation. Sorry 'bout that part.
Lucy
Cranberry juice and concentrate are typically loaded with sugar, so the difference is probably not overwhelming. Again, without knowing the whole recipe, it’s hard to say whether substitutions will radically change the result. But if they do, there may be work-arounds - just add a little lemon juice to mimic the original tartness. Add a few drops of high quality raspberry extract, and chances are you’ll have a good result.
Whole cranberries and whole raspberries boiled down. Strain out the seeds (me, I’d leave them in). Sweeten to taste, it will be TART!
I make REAL cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving this way. Alas, I’m one of the few that prefer this to the jellied glorp.
My mother makes a very lovely cranberry-orange compote. After many decades, my sib agreed that they no longer needed their own little plate of the canned stuff.
So kind of a pickle.
Yep it would keep in jars. Water bath canned, as well.
I think you should do any red juice concentrate. It will work.
I don’t think the taste, after that lengthy cooking will be much altered.
Is my advice, but historically I have found that:
This isn’t wrong but it isn’t quite right either. My experience is that if I want to preserve flavor AND color, I need to simmer it in a very controlled manner. Just enough to drive off the water, but trying to avoid any sort of strong boil. Takes forever but it preserves the color and flavors of the juice. Honestly, the only time I’ve bothered is when I was making homemade “Grenadine” with real juice and sugar, and wanted to make sure the color and flavor didn’t get “muddy” from a high boil.
But, speaking to holiday recipe help, it’s disturbing to my wife that frozen juice concentrate is barely a thing at ALL anymore, because around Thanksgiving so many options call for frozen OJ concentrate. It’s not completely gone, but where once there was an entire section of various options, it’s now a dozen or so at most, and of that dozen 3/4 are apple or grape which are apparently the cheapest.
Is the raspberry flavor essential to the dish?
I’d buy some unsweetened, 100% pure cranberry juice and add enough to get the cranberry flavor to where you want it. Then add seedless raspberry jam to get the raspberry flavor to where you want it, then add more sugar to get the sweetness to where you want it.
Shouldn’t require much of either since it seems like the currently sold concentrates are just a bunch of fruit derived sugar water with a whisper of cran/raspberry flavorings.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to deal with a giant leftover jug of pure cranberry juice, just add canned cranberry sauce and raspberry jam and cut down the sugar a bit.
The other thing you can do if this thing is simmering for 6 hours is just add regular cran-raspberry juice and keep the pot uncovered until the consistency reminds you of what it should look like, then proceed with the recipe covered as you’re used to. You can err on the side of over reducing and just top off with a bit of water at the end to get back to consistency you want.
If 2 64oz jugs of juice is too big for the pot, it doesn’t need to go in all at once, you can just keep topping it up as the mixture evaporates.
I hadn’t thought about it but your wife is right; the supermarket frozen food section used to have several feet of frozen concentrated juice but not now. And note that upthread I quoted the ingredients list from one brand of cranberry-raspberry frozen concentrated juice and the last ingredients are the cranberry and raspberry juice. So making up your own concentrate of just cranberry juice and raspberry juice isn’t going to taste the same.
Final Update:
So, my wife subbed 1 - 32oz bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry cocktail juice for every 3 heads of cabbage. Everything seemed to work out fine, but the real test was at the family Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday. The red cabbage was served without commenting on the changes.
Final verdict: Nobody noticed any difference.
Final Result: I’ve changed the recipe cards and emailed them to everyone who had the old version.
Thanks to one and all for your input. May the remainder of the Holiday Season ahead bring joy and a complete lack of drama.
Lucy
I’m glad it worked out for you.
Great result! I think you were really smart to not mention the modification. Someone would have probably picked up a subconscious psychosomatic suggestion.
I recently had a recipe that called for a relatively small amount of pineapple juice. I couldn’t find any small jars or bottles. I couldn’t even find one of those six-packs that have about 6 oz. apiece. I did find one with pineapple-mango juice. I figured it wouldn’t be too different, and I could just drink the other 5 cans. But although I love both pineapple and mango, I didn’t care for the combination. Fortunately, my brother like them and finished them off when he was visiting us.
And since it was my first time making the recipe, I didn’t have any expectations.
Nice! And it’s always great when people return to a thread to report outcomes.
Did you like the way the recipe turned out? (Why not buy a can of pineapple and use that juice, or was that not an option either?)
I didn’t want to have that much extra left over. I’m on a sugar restricted diet, and I didn’t want to drink a lot of fruit juice (i.e. sugar water). In the little cans, I would only open a little at a time, so I could space out drinking it.
Re: the recipe. As I said, it’s the first time I made it so I didn’t know how it should taste. Like most recipes, if I make it again I’ll modify some things, but the fruit juice is something that I think could go either way.
You’re not alone, I’m the designated cranberry sauce provider for my extended family Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and I always start with fresh (or as fresh as possible) cranberries and simmer them down. Have you ever tried adding lemon zest and grated fresh ginger root to give a bit of a bite to the tangy-ness?
A good cranberry sauce can be used year round, for pork, game, what have you. As others, add grated lemon, orange, fresh ginger, etc. Even pepper flakes
Yes, that’s my basic recipe; zest, ginger, some cinnamon, taste then perhaps honey.
Today’s afternoon meal is turkey, provolone, cranberry sauce, crisp lettuce on some toasted sourdough bread.
That’s a great sandwich. A restaurant near me has a close variaton on this that I haven’t ordered in a while. Since we don’t have any T-day leftovers maybe a should get myself one.