Should You Freeze Cranberry Sauce?

Part of the appeal of Thanksgiving dinner is that there's a lot of food, and you can usually expect to have leftovers. If you don't think you'll finish all of your cranberry sauce within a few days — or if you might need a break from it — then often it seems like a good idea to store it in the freezer. Can you do that?

You can absolutely freeze cranberry sauce, especially if it's homemade or if you've made changes to level up your canned cranberry sauce. Brands like Ocean Spray recommend against freezing leftover canned cranberry sauce because it may grow watery after thawing. If you go for it, be sure to seal your sauce in an airtight bag or container first (never freeze cranberry sauce in the can, especially an unopened one). Then label your container with the date marking when it was frozen, even if that date is Thanksgiving.

If stored properly, cranberry sauce can be frozen for three to four months without issue. There's a chance that it'll stay all right for longer, but the water content will start depleting, which messes up the taste and smell. It may also show signs of freezer burn, which can happen when foods get too dehydrated or when they're exposed to too much oxygen.

On that point of oxidization, you need to make sure the cranberry sauce is sealed in an airtight container to keep extra oxygen out. A few resealable zip-top bags, like Ziploc's gallon food storage bags, are the easiest way to go about it: press out all the air first, which you can do either with your hands (so don't fill the bag all the way to the top) or by closing the bag almost all the way and lowering it into a bowl of water so the remaining air gets forced out to really vacuum seal it. For a slightly less messy method, you can also use an ice cube tray to freeze the cranberry sauce into cubes, which makes them much easy to store in the bags afterward.

If you've added extras like nuts to your cranberry sauce, that shouldn't make a huge difference; nuts freeze well in this example, but you should doublecheck separately for whatever other ingredients you've added to your recipe. In any case, once you're ready to use your sauce, you can thaw it by moving it into the fridge for a night and letting it defrost. Then you'll have a dish featuring seasonal autumn fruit that's ready to eat well into the winter, or possibly early spring.