Cranberry Powder

What it is

Not the sweetened, American-style cranberry. Not the sugary juice. This is Vaccinium oxycoccos, the wild cranberry of the Nordic bogs, air-dried and ground. It is a different species from the American cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) that is farmed for juice and sauce. The Nordic berry is pea-sized, grows in wet bog moss and is picked by hand. It is smaller, more acidic and considerably more complex than the cultivated varieties bred for the North American market. Our guide to the wild Nordic cranberry versus the American cranberry has the full comparison.

The ingredients list is one word: cranberry. No added sugar, no preservatives, no fillers, no anti-caking agents. Contains naturally occurring sugars. 100 g in a resealable doypack.

How it is made

Cranberries are the last berry of the Finnish year. They ripen from late September, and the berry overwinters under the snow. They are hand-picked in the bogs, air-dried at low temperature and ground. Packing happens in Nurmijärvi, Finland. Our autumn berry season guide covers when and where they grow.

What it tastes like

Aggressively tart. Sharp on the tongue and slow to fade. Half a teaspoon in a glass of water with honey and it cuts through everything; no sweetener fully undoes the bite of a wild cranberry, and that is exactly the point. Start with a small amount. Calibrate. Then decide how much you actually want.

How to use it

Stir it into water, juice or a smoothie. Use it in salad dressings, marinades or home-made kombucha. Dust it over yogurt or skyr. Bake it into scones where you want a tart counterpoint to something sweet. A pinch in a sauce for game or roast meat does what a spoon of cranberry sauce does. The red is anthocyanin, so it also works as a natural colour.

Storage and clumping

Keep the bag sealed, in a cool, dry place, out of direct light. There are no anti-caking agents in this powder, no silicon dioxide, so in humid air it can clump. Break the clump with a spoon; the flavour and the colour are unchanged. If it has clumped, it has not gone off. It has just been in the air.

Origin, food safety and shipping

The cranberries are wild, hand-picked in Finnish bogs under everyman’s right. Kylmä Co. is under Finnish food-safety supervision; the Oiva inspection report is published on this site.

They are not organic-certified.

Web-shop parcels go to Finland, the EU, Switzerland and the UK; trade orders ship worldwide, including Japan, China, Korea, Singapore and all Asian markets. Buying for a shop, café or kitchen? See the wholesale page: no minimum order, and free samples.