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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Leftover oranges and marmalade

I have never made and my children have never eaten marmalade.  In fact they asked me what it was when I told them I was going to make marmalade out of the leftover oranges we had in the refrigerator.  I don't like for food to go to waste and since the chickens and goats don't eat citrus, I wanted to come up with a way to use the oranges.  I had a moment of inspiration and thought of marmalade and decided that it was high time we tried it.



Orange marmalade isn't hard to make but does take two days.  You have to wash and peel the rinds.  Cut the rinds into thin strips, peel the pith off the outside of the oranges, cut the ends off the oranges, cut in half, and cut into thin sections.
All the oranges and peels are put in a large bowl with some spring water to sit overnight or 24 hours.  This is supposed to help with any bitterness from the pith and peel.  I should probably add that the recipe I used called for 2 lemons with their peels as well.
The next day the oranges and water are weighed and the same amount of sugar in weight is added to the oranges before they are cooked down. 

 My batch of marmalade took 3 hours to cook to the consistency that I wanted for jarring it up.  I also put a few cinnamon sticks in the oranges while cooking because we like the taste.  The cinnamon made the final product darker than what you see in the store.  We tried some on toast and liked it....although it is very sweet.  Last thing, I did was to water bath the jars for 10 minutes to seal them.

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