Let the marmalade making begin. ;D
Sunday is going to be marmalade day here :)
I have been making it for a few days. How do you do it? Most recipes say cut the oranges up first, which is quite hard work - and tell you to put the pips into a muslin bag and boil in the water to extract the pectin, which is fiddly. But for 40 years I have been boiling the oranges first.
Just in case there are some people who don't do this already, this is what works for me:
Whatever your individual recipe is, simmer the oranges (I add a lemon too) in the water allowance with the lid on for about an hour.
Take them out when they are soft, cut them in half, scoop out all the insides including the pips, return to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes with the lid on while you slice up the nice soft skins.
Run the contents of the pan through a coarse colander with a bowl underneath. My colander is coarse enough to let some of the pulp through (I hate to throw it away) but keeps the pips back. I stir it through with a wooden spoon.
Return the juice/pulp to the pan, add the sliced skins and the sugar and boil until the setting point is reached.
I make small quantities (1.5 lb oranges plus a lemon) every day until I have enough, and it takes very little time and effort.
Apologies if everyone does this already, but many people I know have been doing it the hard way (thank you Mrs Beeton).
artichoke, thank you for that
now save us the trouble,
you have 1.5 lb oranges
1 lemon and how much water and sugar
anything else?
lbb
Gimme some Sevilles.....!!
PS Later - I know Emma finds this over-sharp, preferring Oxford type conserve, but this is REAL fruit stuff - more fruit to sugar than usual, I think? But that's the way it's been for 60 years!!
Marmalade
Pressure cook 4lb Sevilles & 1 Lemon for 15 min in 3 ½ pt Water.
When cool enough, cut Fruit to size, removing pips/membrane into muslin bag.
Dissolve 6lb Sugar in the water with muslin bag & bring to 220F.
Add Fruit & restore to setting point – 220F.
Cool, stir & jar as usual.
I used to use a pressure cooker, but it gave up the ghost eventually.
I use 1.5 lb oranges, a lemon, 2 pints water and a whole bag of sugar (= a kilo these days...). Mrs Beeton uses 3lb sugar but I find that too sweet. I like it bitter.
You can double the quantities and make more at once, of course, but I find that makes a much longer, messier session; I prefer to make it little and often until the season's over.
I freeze a few oranges raw in case I want to make duck with orange sauce, or anything else that needs a sharp tasting orange when they are no longer around.
....or even more Marmalade??
PS - Snap - the same proportions!!
tim and artichoke thank you.
can it go into kilner jars? what do i do about sterilising them?
lbb
Why waste Kilners? Ours goes into any left-over jar with a clean lid.
I do them in the bottom (AGA) oven till I'm ready for them.
Where do you get the Sevilles from? I havent seen any and would love to make some marmalade.
I got mine in our farm shop, they had a large crate of them and everyone was buying them! Didn't know so many peeps made home made marmalade.
I also only use old jam jars - the local womens institute save them for me, any 'regular' smooth plain jars they use to make preserves to sell at the market, so I get all the pretty jars, or small ones.
Got ours in Waitrose yesterday.
Quote from: markfield rover on January 19, 2009, 08:40:12
Got ours in Waitrose yesterday.
Ditto - Marmalade Day today! (How's that for good planning? Tipping it down with rain, something decent on the radio and I've got an indoor job!!)
Made my traditional seville marmalade, but had 6 oranges left, so today picked up a couple of grapefruits and a bag of limes and am now making mixed citrus marmalade. YUM!
What do you do with your spare time, Emma??
;D Dig in other peoples gardens Tim.
Breakfast home made marmalade a la artichoke, how much easier you way,, ;D ;D ;D
Thank you
Evening Emma Jane
Can you tell me where you are in the country re seville oranges please?
Sunny Essex gordon.
Mine's just cooking away now too ;D
Which farm shop did you get them from Emma, as have not seen them in supermarkets
I got mine in Waitrose. Just made first ever batch today - made it for OH and to give to others as I dont like marmalade, but....it tastes lovely!
Tomorrow I am going to do as Emma Jane said and make some mixed citrus marmalade too. It does take a long time though to chop all the skins thinly - any tips from anyone?
Just choose a day when there's something decent to listen to on the radio!
Or enlist a helper?
Quote from: gwynleg on January 23, 2009, 22:13:25
.... It does take a long time though to chop all the skins thinly - any tips from anyone?
I know everyone has their own ways with marmalade, I found skins a problem too. The way marmalade is approached here is as follows:
Oranges peeled first, peel cooked separately, usually in a pressure cooker but can just be simmered for ages.
Peel is cooked until it is so soft that you can take a piece and squish it to nothing easily between thumb and finger. Peel is drained off and cooled, then compressed into a lump and sliced quickly with a sharp knife.
Meantime oranges have been simmering away in just enough water to cover them in a large pan with lid on or have been cooked in a pressure cooker, and are soft enough to break up when stirred.
The orange mixture at this stage contains the pips, so it's strained off and roughly pushed through coarse sieves to extract as much of the fruit as possible.
The pip-free sieved orange and the peel are added together in a large thick bottomed open pan, the sugar is added and dissolved and the mix is heated gently and kept at a low heat until the peel is transparent. Then temperature is increased to 104.5 and held for around 5 minutes.
Hope this helps.
I am so glad to see that there are other marmalade nuts like me. Last year was the first time I made my own seville marmalade as I could never quite find the one I liked in the stores.
I got all jittery mid January when I had not yet seen any down here but the worst is over now (phew), as I found them at my local farm shop last week - I ended up buying 4kgs seville oranges. I'm sure I had a mad glint in my eye when an elderly lady walked up whilst I was making my selection and she backed off a bit. But she did tell me that these were cheap at 1.20 pound per kg as Wait.... were selling them for 2.40 per kg.
I made my marmalade last Wednesday and Thursday night and made mine half way i.e. finished boiling whole organes, cutting and hollowing out and then left pulp draining into main pot. THen Thursday night after work popped in the sugar and stood anxiously testing its readiness for about half an hour before it reached the required consistency.
Got about 18 bottles (various sizes), out of it. I have already handed out half a dozen bottles. Note to myself - if you keep giving it away you will run out again by beginning of December and have nasty side effects again... I think that once bottled it looks like bottled sunshine - so cheerful on these grey winter days.
Mmhh wonder if I can smuggle in another couple of kgs as I want to try Sarah Raven's seville icecream....
Jitterbug
Sarah's - or Nigella's??
seville icecrean, that sounds awsome, do you have a recipe?
thankyou
lbb
Had forgotten it was seville marmalade-making time. . . must get some!!
Love the stuff :P
http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/nigella-lawson/bitter-orange-ice-cream-recipe_p_1.html
Tim thankyou
are you up early or late? are you ok?
i think icecream is on tonihts menu
lbb
tim, or Jitterbug or jennym or anyone who knows realy
my peel is all floating at the top of the jars :'( what did i do wrong?
lbb
If we're talking about Marmalade - you didn't cool & stir before bottling??
Quote from: tim on February 01, 2009, 19:50:11
you didn't cool & stir before bottling??
thankyou tim
yes that will be it.
ok next time cool it, how much?
lbb
First of all thanks to everyone who posted the marmalade recipes which involve cooking the fruit whole and then chopping the peel - I did the last batch that way and it was so much easier :D
But when I put it into the jars I noticed some very small white bits, which I worked out came from the lemon which I had cooked whole in with the sevilles. The lemon was fresh, but the both the lemon pulp and rind has these tiny white dots over it when it was cooked.
I know it sounds a bit weird and it is very difficult to describe - has this ever happened to anyone else? Should I have just put the juice of the lemon in and not the whole thing?
The marmalade tastes great, by the way!
Never mind lbb, your marmalade will still taste luvverly, I'm sure.
But next time, you need to leave the marmalade in the jam pan for about 15 mins, then stir and jar it up. The brew's still plenty hot enough at that stage to 'pop down' the vacuum buttons on jar lids if you're using that kind.
And Tin Shed, my recipe uses only the juice of the lemon, not the whole thing. *waits with interest to see what other marmaladers' methods are*
Oh, whole Lemon. Adds a bit of freshness. And that's what I go for - only adding the peel when you have reached setting point, not boiling it to death!
lbb - yes, fine thanks - just getting a cup of tea.
LBB, I forgot to stir mine as well. Never mind, it still tastes great. Far better than any I've made before.
The whole fruit method is a big improvement. Thanks
Sally
Hurrah!! got mine yesterday from Sainsburys, also basics lemons
Got 3 grapefruit for £1 and bag of limes for 60p from local fruit shop ;)
So,
orange marmalade,
lemon & lime, and
Orange, lemon & grapefruit combo ;D
Made another 8 Ib jars today - now have 20 jars of the stuff!!
One day, hopefully, I shall find some Sevilles?
20 jars, EJ - you will be able to bath in the stuff ;D ;D
Quote from: tim on February 06, 2009, 07:06:51
One day, hopefully, I shall find some Sevilles?
:'(
Tim, haven't you got a greengrocer you can ask? Ours always stocks Sevilles in season (unless they're "manky") ;D But they're not always displayed out front with the rest of the citrus because customers "think they're clems or something and then they think we've tried to poison them".
Wonder if it is good for your complexion tin shed. ??? ;D Mum will be taking half that bounty home with her as I keep the care home workers supplied in jams and preserves, and they supply the jars, and demands when they run out! ::)
Only managed to do half your amount EJ - 10 jars :)
Seville Orange, Lemon & Lime and Grapefruit, Orange and Lemon :P
Debs :D