As the season started to turn from winter to spring, I realized I had yet to do any winter preserving. I caught the marmalade madness one weekend soon after and I think I spent enough time elbow deep in citrus to tide me over until next winter. 
The first batch was a meyer lemon marmalade, which I made by myself. Let me tell you, this was way too much slicing and seeding for my taste. I thought I was going to be aided by our new mandoline when it came to slicing the 5.5 pounds of lemons. The mandoline did a much better job of juicing then it seemed to be doing with slicing, so I had to do it all with a knife. Ouchy! I am not trained for that type of work, so my hands were pretty sore after I finished.
Luckily, round 2 of marmalade weekend involved a friend! Jamie came over to make Citrus Overload Marmalade. 
This batch included a wide variety of citrus: tangelos, pink grapefruit, blood oranges, cara cara oranges, tangerines and lemons. This recipe is really only an option during the peek of citrus season when this wide of a variety of citrus (all organic!) can be found in the market here.
This batch was also very labor intensive and left a mound of citrus carnage behind. As the batch cooked down, we did a little more slicing to take advantage of the peels that were left out of the marmalade. We both have a few baggies of peels for experiments. If you have any favorite citrus peel suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments. So far I am planning on drying some to add to tea and candying some, if I ever get around to it.
The obligatory tasting of the finished goods was conducted. Goat cheese and marmalade make for a good combo!
Finished goods:
Left: Meyer Lemon, Orange Blossom and Honey Marmalade
Right: Citrus Overload Marmalade
both recipes from Tart and Sweet
The next time I make marmalade, I would like to try one of the recipes that takes a few days. I would be interested in comparing the flavors. Ideally I would be able to find a method that yields a slightly less bitter marmalade.
Trin- my fave peel recipe is to take peels and cook them in a sugar/water syrup... it's like candying,but it makes like a citrus jellied candy. You have to cook and cook, then cook some more, but it's delicious! Especially with grapefruit peel. I'll send the recipe if you like. :)
ReplyDeleteYum! I had big plans to make marmalade this winter, but for some reason, never got around to it. Maybe it's not too late... but I worry that the best citrus has already come and gone.
ReplyDeleteMini - I would like that! Candying it high on my list and I have seen many versions of it. It would be good to have one that is vouched for by you!
ReplyDeleteAmanda - Yeah, you might have to pick and choose your citrus carefully at this point. I made my batch about a month ago and it felt like the season was waning then.