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Citrus Fruits
A new year sees the arrival of seville oranges and wide range of citrus fruits, the gems to make marvellous marmalade.
Banish the new year blues and fill your kitchen with the wonderful aroma of seville oranges and other citrus fruits like clementines, blood oranges and sweetie( green coloured) grapefruits. All of these make marmalade. Seville oranges have a limited season so buy them when you see them. They freeze whole, so you can make marmalade with them all through the year. However, the pectin level in frozen fruit reduces with freezing so compensate this by adding an extra 10% of fruit to your recipe. Citrus fruits need thorough cooking before adding sugar to set the marmalade. This ensures the peel of the fruit is soft. If the peel is not cooked for long enough, it will be tough and unpleasant to eat. Also, if you are entering a competition for marmalade, quite a few marks can be lost for tough peel.
Sweetie Grapefruit Marmalade
1lb 8oz Sweetie Grapefruit
1 tsp citric or tartaric acid
3 pints water
3lb granulated sugar
Wash and scrub the fruit. Cut the fruit into quarters and peel.
Remove the pith and the pips. Finely chop the pith. Put the pips and pith
into a 12" squre piece of muslin and tie up with string.
Slice the peel and chop up the fruit.
Put the fruit, peel, water and muslin bag into a large stainless steel pan.
Bring to the boil, cover and gently simmer until the contents of the pan have been
reduced by half. Remove the lid. Test for pectin and reduce further if necessary.
Squeeze out the liquid in the muslin bag back into the pan.
Dissolve the sugar in the pan and bring to a full boil
As soon as setting point is reached, remove from the heat, skim and leave to stand
for 5 minutes. Stir to distribute the peel then pot into sterilised jars.
Makes 4-5lbs
