'Queen of Christmas' Ruth Langsford shares easy cranberry sauce recipe – you can make it now and freeze it for Christmas

She’s the longest-serving presenter on ITV’s This Morning. She’s a regular on Loose Women. And she’s the latest woman&home cover star, revealing she’ll "never say never" to a future relationship after her high-profile split from Eamonn Holmes in 2024.

But these aren’t Ruth Langsford’s only accomplishments and accolades. As it turns out, she’s also the Queen of Christmas, or so her festive apron says.

Ruth, who is no stranger to sharing some of her favourite recipes and kitchen secrets, including the strange ingredient she uses for the ultimate spag bol, is back once again with a perfectly simple cranberry sauce recipe, but this time she’s made one important change.

While her videos from the kitchen attract thousands of likes and comments from her fans, she often gets told the same thing - wear an apron. In past videos, the Loose Women star has shocked fans by cooking without anything protecting her lovely outfits.

Shop Christmas aprons

Heeding her fans’ warnings, this time around, Ruth started the video by debuting her apron, a festive red number with the words ‘Queen of Christmas’ printed on. Ruth reveals that this was a gift from her son, Jack, and gladly accepts the title of Christmas Queen, jokingly flipping her hair.

Apron safely on, it’s time to launch into the recipe which doesn’t need many ingredients - just fresh cranberries, orange zest and juice, Port, caster sugar, cinnamon sticks and a little bit of cloves.

Getting started, Ruth rinses the cranberries and pops them into a pan. Next, you add the zest of an orange over the cranberries before adding the freshly squeezed juice from the orange.

Add in the caster sugar and pour in a splash of Port. For anyone hoping for some exact measurements to follow, Ruth shares in the clip that she doesn’t deal in spoons, ounces and millilitres when it comes to her cooking, something she learnt from just watching her mum. So feel free to adapt the recipe to your own preferences.

After the Port, Ruth adds in the cinnamon sticks and cloves. Here, the presenter has adapted her mum’s recipe somewhat, swapping out whole cloves for ground cloves.

Not only is this a handy tip for anyone who might not find cloves in the supermarket, Ruth revealed it was inspired by her mum sometimes forgetting to take the cloves out once the sauce was done.

Once it’s all been cooking away, Ruth turns down the heat, covers the pan, and leaves it bubbling away for a couple of minutes. Wondering how long to let it simmer? Ruth left it long enough to come back with a freshly made cup of coffee.

Heat off, let it cool and in your jar or container it goes. Simple, and ready to store for Christmas.

If you're looking for more tips on what you can cook or prep ahead of the big day, Jamie Oliver has a 'get ahead' gravy recipe that can take the pressure off extra cooking on Christmas morning.