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Your Thanksgiving table is trash without some kind of bomb cranberry condiment. Why not put something more fancy, fresh, and dare I say, grown-up feeling on the table this year, like this super-easy Turkish cranberry relish? It's so stupidly delicious, that regular ol' cranberry sauce is looking pretty ashamed of itself this year in the corner wearing a dunce cap.
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This cranberry ezmesi doesn't just sneak in comfortably on your holiday table between the vegan green bean casserole and candied yams. No, my dear mommy, that's not it at all. It's also downright silly-tasty spread in the center of mutabal or vegan labneh for a glorious autumnal mezze.
You and your guests are going to be quite psyched at this more flavorful departure from tired old plain-Jane cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving. The fact that this stuff takes very little work to get together? Too darned dope, indeed. Let's get this blended!
Jump to:
- 🥰 Why you'll adore this Turkish cranberry relish recipe
- 🤷♀️ What is ezme?
- 🍋 Ingredients for Turkish cranberry relish
- 🤯Variations
- 📖 How to make this Turkish cranberry relish recipe
- 💡Serving Ideas
- 👉Top tips
- 🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
- ✌️You'll love these Thanksgiving sides too:
- Cranberry Ezme (Turkish Cranberry Relish)
🥰 Why you'll adore this Turkish cranberry relish recipe
✊ Vegan AF & GF Like all of my Turkish recipes, and vegan Thanksgiving recipes, this Cranberry Ezme is completely cholesterol-free and plant-based-no animals harmed in the making of this goodness!
🙅♀️🌾 You Hate Gluten a Lot: …but even if you don't, how nice is it to include some gluten-free vegan recipes as part of your Thanksgiving menu? Because it will leave you feeling less stuffed and gross.
⏱ Less than 10 Minutes of Work: This no-cook recipe takes less than ten minutes of prep AND cleanup time. There is some draining time too, but it's a super-low effort side to whip up on a day that you probably have plenty of other prep to handle.
✅ Tested and Approved Worldwide: Like all the vegan recipes I publish, this Cranberry Ezme has been tested by a massive team of recipe testers from all over. You can be super-confident it'll work for you no matter where you are on Earth!
I'm on my knees staring weirdly into your eyes, asking you in a soothing voice to be my taste-testing partner in crime. Sign up for the recipe testing crew and get early access to new recipes before they're published.
🤷♀️ What is ezme?
Ezme is a traditional Turkish condiment, usually served alongside grilled meats or as part of a mezze spread. The classic Acılı Ezme is a super finely chopped, spicy salad made with fresh, ripe tomatoes, onions, and peppers, mixed with olive oil, lemon juice, and pomegranate molasses.
You can kinda think of it as Turkey's answer to very finely minced pico de gallo: it's both bright and tangy, with a bit of a kick from the chilies and a slight sweetness from the pomegranate.
I knew creating a cranberry ezme for Thanksgiving would be tasty, but until I tested it a few different ways, I had no idea that I would be screaming from the rooftops how bangin' it is. I am pretty sure I like it even more than my bourbon cranberry sauce, which says a lot.
Because it's not a cooked cranberry condiment, ezme balances the heavily cooked components that are typically part of everyone's holiday feast. I seriously can't wait for you to make it and fall head over heels in love with the stuff!
🍋 Ingredients for Turkish cranberry relish
Cranberries
Cranberries, which are called Kızılcık in Turkish, are best when fresh. But I have tested with frozen cranberries too, and it turns out deliciously, with just a slightly different texture. If you have some leftover after making this recipe, I highly reccomend using them to bake up a rustic cranberry galette!
Orange
You can use either navel oranges or blood oranges in this recipe. I have served some super good grapefruit ezmesi at my Galactic MegaStallion pop-ups, and you can definitely use those here too.
Parsley
Parsley is a critical, irreplaceable flavor component of ezme, and in this recipe, we are gonna use plenty of it! I am on team flat leaf all the way, but I know sometimes curly parsley is cheaper, so if you want to use that, go right ahead. Just never ever use dried parsley for anything other than as confetti at a parade. Because it has slightly less flavor than torn-up paper, and quite frankly, it just sucks.
Red Onion and Garlic
Oh yeah! Flavor-wise, the fresh onion and garlic in this recipe make it super different from regular cranberry sauce, but they add a ton of bright pungency to the condiment that makes it way better for perking up your (kinda creepy) human-baby-shaped tofu turkey or vegan fried chicken.
Brown Sugar
There are a quite a bit of acidic flavors in this condiment, from the sumac to cranberries and lemon juice, so a little sweetener is essential for balancing the ezme.
While you can 100% use regular brown sugar in this recipe, I prefer using coconut sugar. It's a lower-glycemic sweetener. This means it isn't going to spike your blood sugar as much, which is the cause of the traditional after-Thanksgiving energy crash.
Pomegranate Molasses
Pomegranate molasses is a staple in classic Turkish recipes like kisir and bulgur pilavı. It gives a sweet, pleasantly bitter, and slightly tart flavor to the ezme recipe. If you can't get pomegranate molasses, you can substitute equal parts maple syrup and lemon juice to achieve a similar sweet-tart taste.
Mint
Just like in my yalya çorbası recipe (Turkish yogurt soup), I use both dried and fresh mint in this recipe. The fresh stuff is just used as a garnish, so you can skip it if you are on a budget.
Aleppo Pepper Flakes (Pul Biber)
If you haven't cooked with these soft, more flavorful-than-hot red pepper flakes, you are going to seriously fall in love. Aleppo pepper brings a mild heat and fruity undertones, which make it an ideal spice for Turkish dishes like Taze Fasulye Tarifi.
The closest substitute is gochugaru, the Korean chili flakes that are famously used for making vegan kimchi and Korean BBQ sauce.
Sumac
Sumac is a tart, tangy spice used in Middle Eastern recipes like bolani bread to add brightness, much like lemon, without adding extra liquid. Its citrusy flavor boosts and diversifies the tanginess of the cranberries.
If you can't find sumac, the best replacement is amchur-the dried green mango powder used in vegan Indian recipes like aloo tikki chaat and sukha kala chana.
*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.
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🤯Variations
Antep Ezme with Pomegranate Seeds
In the city of Gaziantep, a popular variation of this condiment is made with a ton more pomegranate molasses. Add more pomegranate seeds on top when plating the ezme. There's a great guide to teach you how to easily get pomegranate seeds out of the fruit in my shakarkandi recipe.
Chestnut Pomegranate Ezmesi
OMG, the glory that is pre-roasted bagged or jarred chestnuts. It makes my classic vegan stuffing and my chestnut and chili-oil topped carrot lentil soup recipe soooo much easier. So much easier, in fact, that you don't have to think twice about folding in a big ol' handful into this ezme once it's all mixed up. Save a couple of slices to garnish with.
📖 How to make this Turkish cranberry relish recipe
Make this knock-out cranberry side dish easily by following these steps and helpful tips. Or just scroll down and print the recipe at the bottom of this blog post.
Step One
Cran-bam, Thank You Ma'am:
Toss the cranberries, orange chunks, parsley, red onion, garlic, and salt into a food processor and pulse until everything is finely chopped but not fully pulverized.
Step Two
In Drain In the Membrane:
Place your chopped mix into a fine wire mesh strainer over a bowl, letting it sit for fifteen minutes to allow excess liquid to drain off. Discard the liquid that collects in the bowl.
Step Three
Cran Theft Auto:
Move the strained mixture into a clean bowl and stir in the brown sugar, pomegranate molasses, dried mint, lemon juice, Aleppo pepper flakes, sumac, black pepper, and olive oil until everything is well combined.
Step Four
Ezme Your Ear and I'll Sing You a Song:
Taste the mixture and tweak the salt, sugar, or lemon juice as needed to your taste.
Serve your ezme in an attractive dish, garnishing it if desired with fresh mint or parsley leaves.
💡Serving Ideas
There are really two main directions you can go in when serving this condiment. And I am gonna give you some awesome serving suggestions for both situations.
When serving as Turkish mezze:
This stuff is seriously lovely to use when making an appetizer table for your guests.
You can serve Turkish ezme salad as a dip or as part of the filling for yaprak sarma (Turkish stuffed grape leaves) or lahana sarma (cabbage rolls). It's also a pretty baller topping to spoon onto some mükver (Turkish zucchini fritters).
Cranberry ezme works amazingly as a condiment for classic Turkish bulgur appetizers like çiğ köfte, mercimek köftesi, and fellah köftesi.
When serving as a Thanksgiving cranberry relish:
It's probably pretty obvious to you that my family and I are vegan by now.
So, for Thanksgiving, my main entree is usually either vegan turkey stuffed with vegan cornbread stuffing, or (yes, I know it's creepy) a human-baby-shaped tofu turkey.
Thanksgiving is all about the sides anyway, though, am I right? Usually, my dairy-free mashed potatoes are served with mushroom gravy, but sometimes I do a vegan brown gravy, or even a country-style vegan sausage gravy.
Other sides that are a must on my Thanksgiving table are candied yams, vegan green bean casserole, and some freshly baked vegan cornbread.
All of these kinda heavily cooked Thanksgiving dishes are really brought to life with a pop of the freshness that this cranberry ezme brings to the table.
Of course, you don't have to serve this ezme as a condiment during the main event. It's also a great thing to serve when your guests arrive with some seasonal hors d'oeuvres. My top picks to go with this are cranberry chestnut puff pastries, vegan sausage rolls, vegan pigs in a blanket, butternut squash crostini, and a big stuff pumpkin puff pastry with crudités.
👉Top tips
- Balance Your Acidity and Heat:
Ezme should have a perfect harmony between tangy and spicy, but it's easy to overdo it on either. Taste as you go and adjust the lemon juice and sweetener in small increments to balance the flavor. - Finely Chop for Optimal Texture:
Ezme is all about the texture, so the vegetables should be chopped very finely. A food processor can make this easy, but please don't go overboard. You want everything uniform, but not a mushy paste. The smaller the pieces, the more evenly the flavors absorb into the bits of cranberry and onion. - Drain if Storing for Days:
As the salt slowly draws out moisture from the fresh ingredients, the ezme can look a little swampy after a day or two in your fridge. Simply let it drain in a wire mesh strainer, and since you will be draining out a small amount of the seasonings when you do so, taste it to see if it needs to be adjusted before garnishing and serving.
🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
This ezme has just a tiny bit of heat in it from the Aleppo chilies, which are really more flavorful than hot. I will be shocked if anyone at your Thanksgiving finds it to be objectionably spicy.
Of course, if you or some of your guests have a very-insanely-low spice tolerance, you can leave the pepper flakes out entirely.
Ezme stays fresh for about 3-5 days when stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. The flavors actually improve after a day or two, but it can also start looking a little watery.
If that happens, just drain the extra liquid off using a wire mesh strainer. Since you'll be draining out a little bit of the seasonings when you do that, taste it to see if it needs to be adjusted before garnishing and serving.
Freezing ezme is a sorta terrible idea. I mean, it's a salad, right? Would you freeze a salad? If your answer is yes, please change that practice at once.
✌️You'll love these Thanksgiving sides too:
Unlock a discounted bundle of classes that walk you through vegan Thanksgiving menus with detailed video instruction from Chef Adam Sobel.
Cranberry Ezme (Turkish Cranberry Relish)
Ingredients
- 12 oz cranberries fresh or frozen
- ¼ cup navel orange, or blood orange peeled and chopped
- ½ cup flat-leaf parsley chopped
- ½ cup red onion diced
- 1 teaspoon garlic minced
- ¾ teaspoon salt or to taste
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar or coconut sugar
- 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
- 2 teaspoons dried mint
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 1 ½ teaspoons Aleppo pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon sumac
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Optional Garnishes
- 1 tablespoon fresh mint leaves
- 1 tablespoon fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
- Place the cranberries, chopped orange, parsley, red onion, garlic, and salt in a food processor and pulse until very finely chopped, but not pureed.
- Transfer the cranberry mixture to a wire mesh strainer suspended over a bowl and let it rest for 15 minutes to drain out some of the excess moisture.
- After 15 minutes, discard the juices that have been released. Place the ground contents of the strainer into the bowl and stir in the brown sugar, pomegranate molasses, dried mint, lemon juice, Aleppo pepper flakes, sumac, black pepper, and olive oil.
- Taste and adjust the seasoning with additional salt, sugar, or lemon juice if needed.
- Serve the ezme in an attractive dish, optionally garnished with fresh mint or parsley leaves.
Video
Notes
Ezme's all about balancing tangy and spicy, but it's easy to tip the scales. Adjust your lemon juice and sweetener gradually to keep things harmonious while tasting as you go. 🔪 Edward Scissorhands That Veg
For the best texture, chop your veggies finely. A food processor can help, but don’t pulverize them—you want uniform bits, not a mushy blob. Finer pieces soak up all the flavors better. 🌀 Drain the Swamp
If you're storing ezme for more than a day, it’ll start releasing cranberry juice. Let it drain in a wire mesh strainer and taste again to adjust seasonings before serving.
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Erik Schmid says
Had to try this sounded so yummy, and yes it is very very yummy. I have been trying making the same orange cranberry relish for decades , it’s simply one bag cranberries, one navel orange, anywhere from q cup to 4 cups sugar, pulse fruit to desired consistency then place in bowl mix in sugar. However this Ezme is out of this world,its a flavor bomb, will be making this every year for both thanksgiving and Christmas.
Laura Good says
OMG! The Cranberry Ezme is DIVINE! This recipe is a keeper! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe and introducing me to some spices and ingredients I hadn’t used before (sumac, Aleppo pepper, pomegranate molasses).
Eric Purdy says
stunningly good and makes a magic change to the shop bought cranberry sauce.
Adam Sobel says
Thanks Eric! This is 100% going to be part of my personal Thanksgiving menu this year.