Winter Marmalade

I had a few oranges and a lemon, and have been craving Marmalade since we moved here.  I love that sweet semi bitter flavour of citrus, and the bright color of orange reminds me of crunching leaves in fall on a cool crisp day.  A normal person who responds to logic, would have gone out and bought a nice bottle of Smuckers Marmalade or said to themselves, " I am going to plan a head pick up all thing things I need and make marmalade on Saturday."  I thought I have two oranges and one lemon! I am going to make marmalade today! I was doing a little research of how exactly to make this fabulous spread and there was a recipe for "easy marmalade" This should have been the first thing that snapped me back in to reality.. no jam making process is easy, its often time consuming, and takes a few necessary items in order for a successful batch, by necessary I mean a stove with four elements.

But I went to the store and bought one grapefruit, two more oranges, three more lemons, and sugar. The family we are staying with had jam jars and lids. So I thought I was set to go.

 First you are supposed to boil the jars and lids
this sterilize them, so you don't have dust or bacteria in your jars.

 Grab your citrus fruit and peel them.

Yes that is a hot plate...
Rule number one, if you have access to a stove
use it! I did have access to a stove, but I remained faithful to the hot plate and it let me down!

Boil the water and blanch peel.
I thought Blanch was just a horrid name for a woman with a huge nose. But it is placing an item such as, fruit peel, in to boiling water for a minute. After rinse peel under cold water.

Stack your blanched peels up and slice thin. This my friends is a work out! Who needs the gym when you can cut peels for 45 minutes ( you could probably just grate them on the fruit and it would work just as well) But my arms and legs are burning.

 Slice the fruit roughly and pull out the seeds. If you want your marmalade to be less chunky remove the pith (all the white bit around the fruit) and cut fine. The Pith has natural pectin in it so if you do that you will want to save all the pith and tie it up in a cheese cloth to throw in with the fruit. Or buy pectin to put in.

 Put your fruit and peels in to a pot, and just barely cover it with water. Measure how many cups of water you put in because that will be the minimum cups of sugar you will need.
This batch was four cups of water = I will need at least four cups of sugar.

 Bring it to a gentle rolling boil.
Using a hotplate is like making marmalade camping.

 Now this packet was organic not "fine" sugar, this could also be one of my problems. Four cups was this whole bag! I still had to add one cup of brown sugar to my marmalade.

 Bring this mixture up to a boil then turn it down and let it simmer for about 45 min to an hour.

At this point all my jars were cold, and I didn't want them to crack so because I had one hotplate and no electric kettle I had to use this water heater that came along side the coffee pot. ( this process took about 45 minutes... then my water was luke warm.) Those of you with a stove, grab a very large pot and boil some water. If you have canning supplies this is where you will need them. One handy item is a canning rack, this you place in your pot so the Jars do not hit the bottom and crack open. Also there are tongs to pull the scalding jars from the water.

 Another handy tool is a candy thermometer so you can test the right temperature of your marmalade. It should be at 219-220F. or 104C. You can also put the hot jam on a plate and see if it solidifies. The marmalade needs to hit that temperature so that the pectin and sugar can do some science and make your marmalade thick.

 Fill your jars with the lovely marmalade, wipe of any access sitckiness and place jars in to boiling 

water for 15-20 minutes. If you don't have a rack to hold your jars you can put some extra lid rims at the bottom of the pot and place the jars on the more narrow side. Getting them out this way is tricky. Mine involved an oven mitt and ice cream scoop.

Let the jars cool and you should hear a symphony of popping. If you have lots of jars leave them for a while and let them set. When all the lids have sealed you can put them in to the preserve cupboard.

Now mine didn't set the greatest, I believe it was because I was too prepared! Soaking oven mitt, ice cream scoop, hot plate and all.
I still use it as marmalade, but if your marmalade turned out a little runny you can also use it as a marinade for pork loin, or as a orange sauce for french toast.

The glass is always half full!