Lemon Marmalade

When life gives you lemons…

I’ve made marmalade in the past, from oranges, grapefruit and even lemons. I turned to trusty Uncle Google for a recipe, and there seemed to be conflicting messages about lemon to sugar to water ratio, and also how to extract the pectin. So I’m going it alone. Let’s see how my recipe works:

1kg lemons

2kg sugar

2l water

I sliced and removed the pith and pips from the lemons, and put them in the water to soak overnight. To extract the pectin from the pith and pips I placed them in a small sieve in a small container of water. Most of the recipe books say “place the pith and pips in a small muslin bag” but who has those lying about the house? I mean, really? Hopefully this will work instead. And yes, the water is included in the 2l of water mentioned above. 

The next day, I added the pectin-rich water to the mix, and boiled the whole lot up for 1½ hours. At this stage it’s wise to put a saucer in the fridge for your set testing. I then added the sugar. At this point I put the jars into the oven to sterilise. Then I returned it to a fast boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it catching on the bottom of the pan; and started testing for a set by putting a small amount on the saucer, letting it cool, and seeing if it wrinkles when you push it with a spoon – the classic way to check that it will solidify when it’s cooled. After three goes, it set, so total cook time was 2¼ hours. 

I let the mix cool down a bit before putting it into jars, which is always a messy business…for some reason some of it always dribbles down the outside of the jar. It made six jars. 

Lady Marmalade

I had a notion to make some marmalade, so I looked around t’internets and found, then adapted someone else’s recipe.  Here’s what I made:

1.3kg oranges (this turned out to be 5 large navel oranges)

1.3kg sugar

1.25l water

Juice of 1 lemon

I sliced the oranges very thinly, then put them in a pot with the water and the lemon juice to soak for 24 hours. This, apparently, allows the pectin to develop. I then boiled it up (with a lid on the pot) for 40 minutes, added the sugar, and cooked it at a rolling boil, uncovered, for a further 40 minutes. 

Then I started testing the set every 10 minutes, by putting a small amount on a refrigerated plate and sticking it back in the fridge for two minutes. At the 4^th go (after about another 30 minutes) I got the classic wrinkles after a couple of minutes in the fridge, and stopped cooking. I let it stand and cool a bit for a further 30 minutes before ladling it into jars.

These quantities made 5 jars of marmalade, which was handy, as that's how many empty jars I had. 

This morning I tried it on my toast, and it worked! It had formed a proper jelly, and tasted nice and orangey, and wasn’t too sweet. This has been much more successful than my previous marmalading attempts which have either failed to set properly, or ended up by being a gloopy, sticky something that bore no real resemblance to real marmalade – possibly due to my being suckered in to using preserving sugar when I should have stuck to the ordinary granulated. I think the pre-soaking helped as well, so I’ll continue to use this technique.