Making Marmalade - A Selection of Recipes and Articles

Making Marmalade

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Many recipes recommend removing the white pith because it is bitter. Other recipes recommend removing the pith and reserving it, cooking it along with the fruit in a cheesecloth bundle and removing it at the end, presumably to allow extraction of the pectin. Some recipes call for a blanching or soaking stage. The primary purpose of blanching is to remove the bitterness from the pith and peel.

That also keeps the recipe simple— just slice up the fruit and throw it in the pot with the peel pieces. The sugar goes in. The original recipe calls for 4 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar with ten lemons. The 4 cups of water barely covered the raw fruit in a saucepan with roughly equal depth and diameter.

For scaling the recipe up or down, you can use that as a rough guide: For the rest of us, put a spoonful of the proto-marmalade on a cool plate. It should show signs of jelling after cooking for 45 minutes to an hour. We recommend spreading it on a freshly toasted english muffin. Or maybe a crumpet. You can put the rest of it in a bowl, let it cool, then keep it in the fridge and use it.

Or you can can it. Canning is not as scary as it sounds. You pour the warm marmalade into warm jars, wipe the rims clean, put a clean lid and rim on them and boil the jars covered with water for 15 minutes. There are lots of kinds of canning setups but the simplest is a pot with a spacer to keep the jars off the bottom.

You can put a small wire cooling rack, a vegetable steamer, or an array of skewers tied together in the pot to keep the jars off the bottom. After boiling the jars, you can ladle out some of the water and lift your jars out with an oven mitt. A wide mouthed funnel is nice since it keeps stuff of the rims of the jars, but is also not necessary, especially if you get wide mouthed jars. The folks who make Ball jars have some nice overviews pdf of canning techniques.

You may recognize our technique as one common in mathematics.

Is That a Jelly, a Jam, a Preserve, or a Marmalade?

We have reduced a difficult problem what to do with 75 pounds of citrus into a problem whose solution is well known: Marmalade is one of the easiest things to make. This steralises the jars and when the jars cool down, creates an hermetic seal air tight seal which stops bacteria breeding hence the "pop" when you open jars. If you have a breadmaker, most of them these days have a "Jam" setting.

Good luck and remember.. I have made marmalade and jams for years, and never once boiled the jars in water to sterilize them. The easy way is, until your jam is ready, clean your jars and lids thoroughly and leave them in very hot water. After half an hour, when it has somewhat cooled, turn the jars over. You should hear a pop after an hour or so, when the metal lids cave in as the air inside the jar cools and the pressure drops.

The dishwasher is hot enough to sterilize them and I get them all done in one go. Much simpler than sterilizing 60 jars in a pot that holds four: Speaking of Quince, that is one of the most unusual tasting and smelling jams ever. And the fact that it turns pink is amazing.

If you ever get a chance …. Any preserved food with a high dose of either sugar jams or salt pickes will stay good for a very long time without sterilization. Osmetic pressure will blow up the bacteria as they try to balance their sugar or salt concentration with your preserve. Lemon marmalade here I come!

I put all the rest of the peel into muslin, which I remove from the pot only after the marmalade has jelled. Of course, Jules chops all the peel, as she, like all of you treasures that bitterness. The reason I know about putting most of the peel into muslin is Jules says to do so of you want a clear marmalade. A special thanks to Phillipe for the bit about placing the filled jars upside down to help seal the lids.

And, of course, thanks to the Evil Scientist for starting this whole blog!! This recipe is wonderful for those who had to pick all their citrus fruits in a hurry before they ruined, but then there are the rest of us who saw the temperatures in Florida and thought about how the price of oranges is going to skyrocket immediately! Another improvised spacer for jars is the rings for the lids.

Rings are relatively cheap, so you might buy an extra package for this. Just make sure the jars are sitting on the rings, not inside them. You could even lay the skewers on top of the rings. Marmalade is usually made with rind included, is usually bitter, and is usually made from citrus fruits. The word comes from the word for quince in many romance languages. Jam can be made from just about any fruit pulp and is usually sweeter. Jelly is usually made from fruit juice or strained fruit.

Just a correction, marmalade comes from the Portuguese word for quince, other romance languages use similar forms of quince like coing fr , cotogna it , only the Spanish come close membrillo es. In Portuguese quince is "Marmelo" hence the word "marmelada". In Portuguese the distinction between jam "compota" and marmalade is easy: Any sort of jam. Though I admit I am a purist and only use the word marmalade for Seville orange marmalade myself: A word of caution, though, to people using store-bought oranges.

Waxed fruit should be scrubbed beforehand with a brush or abrasive pad to remove the waxy preservative.

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Produce bought from grocery stores is coated in food grade wax, if at all. I wash all fruits and veges with dish soap and really hot water. We just discovered a great way to use up that Marmalade. Toast some pumpernickel bread and heavily butter one slice per sandwich. Liberally apply marmalade to both pieces, add some well cooked but not too crispy thick cut bacon, close up and enjoy. Another thing to do with an excess of citrus is candied peel.

Great job at simplifying a recipe to its essence. Made some today, but must have overcooked it.

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Hopefully the next one will be better. Try using a lemon in with the oranges to increase the acidity and get a better set. Too little acidity results in a poor set and you end up over-boiling which gets rid of some of the water, hence the rubbery finish. The way we do it is to wash the jars and rince them in hot water, then put them in the oven upside down and turn to celcius. The lids and rings are then put in a small pot of water and boiled from 5min before needed until they are all gone.

Less pith and no seeds in the mandarans, either… Overall I rate it as a success! Everything looks fine and home-made marmalade tastes much better than any commercial product you can buy. Just a quick comment from here in Britain — if you are using normal "eating" oranges, then you are not actually making marmalade, you are making orange jam.

Authentic English marmalade has to be made with Seville oranges, which are so bitter that they are uneatable — only this can give you the proper bitter taste. Similar to the word robot, the word marmalade has both specific and general uses. The term marmalade is generally used for any bitter jam with rind in it, especially if it is made from citrus. Seville orange marmalade is, of course, the quintessential marmalade, and is what most folks think of when they hear the word.

Do the seville oranges also make the marmalade darker? My British husband is particular about his marmalade imagine that! What about the dark? The longer you cook the marmalade, the deeper the sugar caramelizes, darkening it. It also gets thicker and chewier. Some recipes I have seen warn against this and call it "overcooking". I think it adds interesting flavor notes and texture, but be warned that some folks think it is undesirable. Dark marmalade can be made by using half white sugar, half demarara sugar and a couple of tablespoons of black treacle.

Seville orange marmalade has the same colour as any other orange jam. It starts light and fresh-tasting, and as it cooks it caramelizes and darkens. By the way it seems a lengthy process to pare the orange peel.

Marvelous Marmalade

The usual method is either to juice the oranges and slice the remaining peel, or cook them whole then slice the peel, reserving the pulp. I would suggest one ounce of black strap molasses to a batch 4 to 6 cups , while simmering may do the trick. Seville oranges are impossible to find in some areas, including where I live. I think in general that home canned jams are best in the first year and usually last a year or two.

A similar note on canning. My family makes strawberry jam each year and can it so we have enough to last us until the next summer. We leave maybe a half inch of room from the top of the jar and then pour in melted paraffin wax after the jam has hardened a bit. The lids go on after the wax has solidified. Actually I have seen the wax topped jams go bad with mold.

My mother used to make blackberry jam from the bushes growing wild all around our neighborhood and sometimes this would happen. Grapefruit marmelade is nice and bitter. First eat your grapefruit and keep skins in fridge till you have enough.

I usually use 2 or 3. Cut them up with one lemon and put in pressure cooker. Cook on high for 10 mins and then proceed as normal adding the same volume of sugar to the fruit. Anyhow to the point — I wanted to recommend that you tried tomato conserves, while your rendering down the candyfab cast-offs: As a former editor, I must say: First loosen the honey and glucose syrup by dipping their containers in warm water, then weigh out into your saucepan.

Add the sugar and water and heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Something dramatic is about to happen.

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Stir the mixture to make sure all the powder is incorporated, then pour it out onto your silicone sheet or baking tray. Leave to set for at least 30 minutes, then break the brittle mass into small pieces. Stir the remainder in an airtight jar — you will have more than you need — and you are unlikely to regret it.

Grease the cake tin with butter, and then shake a little flour over it to form a non-stick barrier. Turn the tin upside down and pat it so that any excess flour falls off. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl for minutes until pale, light and fluffy. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and add the almonds. Mix until the contents are smooth. Then gently pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the oven until cooked and firm about 50 minutes. When it has cooled, cut it through the middle with a long serrated knife and lift off the top half. Replace the top of the cake and leave it to set in a cool place for an hour.

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Follow the Irish Examiner. On the other hand, a discussion on marmalade often elicits very firmly held view points and definite preferences.

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