Gallery: 10 Easy Cranberry Sauce Recipes for Thanksgiving

This original sauce is composed of cranberries, sugar, water, and salt, with a couple tablespoons of fresh orange juice to provide a nice complement to the cranberries' tartness.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

Kenji explains just how easy it is to make cranberry sauce. Keep it simple or customize as you please with orange, chopped nuts, or dried fruits.

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[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Taking inspiration from another fall comfort—mulled wine—this version swaps the water for red wine and adds in holiday spice in the form of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. Molasses and maple syrup give the sweetness an extra depth as well, making this sauce the most layered of the lot.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

Nuts are a common add-in for cranberry sauce, but this recipe takes things a little further by first toasting the pecans with a spiced brown sugar glaze. Once chopped and added into the prepared sauce after it's cooled slightly, the finished product has a sweet and nutty crunch.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

This recipe's Granny Smith apples build on cranberries' already tart and sweet profile, and the addition of extra orange juice and zest adds a brighter flavor than any of the other sauces.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

In terms of flavor, this sauce stays faithful to tradition, with an uncomplicated balance between sweet and tart. Using pomegranate juice in lieu of water during cooking pushes the fruitiness a notch further, which is accented by a handful of pomegranate seeds sprinkled at the table.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

This chutney is chunky, as chutneys are, and begins with a base of fresh cranberries. Next come orange zest and juice. Ginger—crystallized or grated fresh—lends just the right amount of heat, at once exotic and as familiar as pumpkin pie.

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[Photograph: Kerry Saretsky]

Pear and ginger are a great contrasting pair, and they work very well together in this recipe, which calls for a double dose of ginger—both grated fresh and chopped crystallized ginger. If you want a little bit less edge, cut back on the crystallized ginger or omit it completely.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

For this variation, add spices like cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves as well as orange juice and zest, then finish it off with a bit of spiced rum. The end result is incredible: a cranberry sauce that has a multidimensional array of seasonal flavors that fits seamlessly into any Thanksgiving meal.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]

Apples' sweet, fruity flavor balances the tart cranberries, for a change of pace from the straight-up tangy relishes that you may be used to. This one's just sweet enough to eat at dinner and then again with dessert.

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[Photograph: Joshua Bousel]