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Fruit / Pickled in vinegar

Cranberry Orange Chutney

Ruby red, sweet and tangy, with a gentle warmth of spice. Whole cranberries, orange juice, golden raisins, onion, ginger and cinnamon come together in a thick chutney for the autumn table.

Recipe author: National Center for Home Food Preservation · University of Georgia

Time
15 minutes of cooking + 10–20 minutes of canning + 12–24 hours of cooling
Makes
About 8 US half-pint jars (237 ml each)
Season and ingredients
Autumn and early winter
Method
Cooking with 5% acidity vinegar + boiling-water canning
Jump to the instructions ↓Ingredients and their stories ↓Download printable PDF
Cranberry Orange Chutney · Cranberry chutney. Illustrative photograph.
Cranberry chutney. Illustrative photograph.Photograph: Anathea Utley, Cranberry chutney · CC BY 2.0. Cropped to fit the layout.

Storage

Store correctly processed, sealed jars in a cool, dark, dry place, ideally at 10–21°C. Use within a year for best quality. Once opened, refrigerate at no more than 4°C and use clean utensils. The recipe source gives no separate storage period after opening. If you discover a failed seal within 24 hours of correctly processing the jars, refrigerate and use within a week. Never taste food from a jar with a lost seal, mould, leaks, a bulging lid or any other signs of spoilage.

Instructions

Download printable PDF

Recipe card to download and print

0 / 8 steps completed

  1. Prepare the water-bath canner

    Heat the water in a covered canner fitted with a rack to about 82°C. Use Mason canning jars of the specified size with two-piece metal lids. Wash the jars and keep them hot. Prepare the lids according to the manufacturer’s directions. For a recipe that requires overnight soaking, prepare the canner and jars on the day you fill them.

  2. Sort and rinse the cranberries

    Rinse the cranberries thoroughly. Remove stems and discard any soft, shrivelled or damaged berries.

  3. Combine the ingredients

    Place the cranberries, onion, raisins, both sugars, 5% acidity vinegar, orange juice, ginger and cinnamon sticks in a large stainless steel saucepan.

  4. Cook the chutney

    Bring to the boil over a high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes, or until the cranberries are tender. Stir frequently, especially along the bottom of the pan, to prevent scorching.

  5. Remove the cinnamon

    Remove and discard the cinnamon sticks.

  6. Fill the jars

    Spoon the hot chutney into clean, hot US half-pint jars (237 ml). Leave ½ inch (about 1.3 cm) headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust the headspace if needed. Wipe the rims with a clean, damp paper towel and fit the two-piece lids.

  7. Process in boiling water

    Place the jars upright on the rack in the preheated canner. The water must cover the lids by at least 2.5 cm (1 inch), or at least 5 cm (2 inches) if processing takes more than 30 minutes. Cover and bring to a full rolling boil. Start timing only once the water is boiling: 10 minutes at elevations up to 304.8 m (1,000 ft); 15 minutes above 304.8 m and up to 1,828.8 m (6,000 ft); 20 minutes above 1,828.8 m. Keep the water boiling throughout. If boiling stops, bring the water back to a full boil and restart the entire processing time.

  8. Cool and check the seals

    Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and wait 5 minutes. Lift the jars out upright. Leave them undisturbed for 12–24 hours. Do not press down on the lids or retighten the bands. Check the seals, remove the bands, then wash and dry the jars and label them with the date.

Tips

This is vinegar pickling, not fermentation. Do not replace the specified 5% acidity vinegar with homemade vinegar, kombucha or vinegar of unknown acidity. Keep the ingredient proportions, jar size, headspace and full processing time unchanged.

One US cup is 236.6 ml; one US pint is 473.2 ml; one US half-pint is 236.6 ml. Gram equivalents for ingredients measured by volume are approximate. Use the original volume measures when following this recipe. Do not apply these processing times to larger jars.

A home-canning processing time does not validate commercial production. Changes to batch size, packaging or ingredients require assessment of the process and shelf life of the specific product.

Use fresh, whole, edible American cranberries. Do not substitute sweetened dried cranberries or lingonberries. This tested recipe includes orange juice, not orange zest.

Allergens: golden raisins may contain SULPHITES. Check the juice and vinegar too. Under EU rules, sulphites must be declared above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/l in the finished product; use the ingredient specifications to assess this.

How to serve

Serve a spoonful with blue or mature cheese, pâté, roast duck, turkey or pork. The chutney also works well in a cold-meat sandwich or as an ingredient in a sauce served with a finished dish.

Ingredients / history / science

Discover the ingredients and their stories

What goes into the jar? Where does the flavour come from? Open a topic and explore its sources.

History on a plateA modern recipe with a name and a date

This version is not presented as an anonymous traditional recipe. It was developed at the University of Georgia for the National Center for Home Food Preservation and released by Elizabeth L. Andress in March 2003. The ingredient proportions, jar size and canning times come from that source.

Did you know?A small evergreen shrub

The American cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is a low-growing evergreen shrub of wet habitats in northeastern and north-central North America. NIH records its historical use by Indigenous peoples and later European settlers as food, a dye and a traditional plant preparation. This does not make the chutney released in 2003 an Indigenous dish: it is a separate, modern recipe.

A closer lookWhat science tells us

NCHFP explains that several preservation barriers work together in chutney: fruit acids and vinegar, the loss of some water during cooking, heat treatment and a sealed container. Cranberries also supply pectin, which gives this chutney an almost jelly-like consistency once it cools. Andreani et al. (2021) found abundant pectic fractions among the cell-wall polysaccharides of pomace from the “Stevens” variety, but did not test this chutney or its shelf life. Do not claim a fixed pectin content, medicinal effects or a particular pH without analysing the finished product. For small food-service or retail production, the NCHFP home recipe is a useful reference, but it does not replace validation of the actual process, packaging, pH and shelf life within the business’s HACCP system.

Recipe sources

This recipe is based on the sources listed above.

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