Anyone else making marmalade this weekend?

[NuclearStandoff]

Have had my organic seville oranges for a week now, so need to get on with it.

But it does take all day ...

[LakeFlyPie]

Did my Sevilles last weekend and have been procrastinating over the Bergamots I bought at same time for a week.
Need to get them done before they go mouldy.

Which recipe do you use?

I use this one and finds it's an hour's chopping one evening and a couple of hours boiling, stirring, decanting, fiddling the next night.

Enjoy

[SparkyUK]

Just started the orange lemon ginger one Nigel Slater wrote up in the Observer today. He insists you leave it overnight so, phew, i get a break before boiling and bottling tomorrow. I don't even like Marmalade, but as soon as I start chopping I remember how much I like making it. (Luckily DH is a big fan so he's happy to eat it up, and people always seem to like it as gifts.)

Hoping the fruit lady still has some tomorrow so I can do more batches. But also wondering if she might have some Bergamots. I've never seen them for sale, but I may just not have been looking. Where did you find yours?

[orangina]

Have just made my second batch (first batch I made this time last week). Followed a Riverford recipe, but fiddled around a bit this week and it is more of s "fine shred" than a chunky cut.... which I think I prefer......

The house smells of marmalade now.... it is lovely!

[NuclearStandoff]

I also used the Riverford recipe, which came with my oranges.

But it was a bit vague, I left the lid on when I was boiling up the peel in the Aga oven and ended up with far too much liquid. Which made me quite cross as I then had to reduce it.

But the finished result is lovely.

Previously I have used the River Cottage Preserves recipe, which is very good and does not involve muslin - and I think I will go back to that next time.

[ethelb]

Yes I am! I got my sevilles at Waitrose today. I've got 2kg. That is going to make TONNES of marmalade isn't it?

[NuclearStandoff]

I had 1.5kg which made 8 jars, half normal size and half extremely large. So yes, you will have a lot. You will need loads of sugar!

[ethelb]

Cheers @nuclear I'm planning for 10-12 jars including several huge pickle jars.

I will make half orange, lemon and ginger and half orange and kaffir lime( grown on own windowsill!) as I am a masochist.

[whats4teamum]

I have 2 kilos and plan to do Nigel slaters orange, lemon, ginger plus river cottage standard one. How big did you all do your ginger shreds? Was it any good?

[orangina]

I did my first bath with quite big peel shreds (riverford), but having made it, I remembered I prefered the shred a little finer (), so cut the peel much finer. Both delicious, but I prefer a slightly finer shred.

(Took me twice as long to prep for it though.....!)

[orangina]

first BATCH.....

[MrsPennyapple]

I've been fancying having a go at making marmalade, I've never done it. I've done lots of jam in the past though. I will see if I can get seville oranges, the shops around here don't normally have anything that exotic! I've got the River Cottage preserves book so it's good to know that the recipe in there is a good one.

In other news, I had NO IDEA that bergamot was a type of orange. I love it when I find out interesting new things! :)

[ethelb]

@MrsPenny Waitrose have them if you have one of those. Often market stalls do but only for a week or two.

[Miggsie]

I did the Delia SMith recipe - didn't rate it much.
I also did a batch of a recipe from an old REader's Digest cookbook - much nicer.

I get DH to cut the peel.

If you freeze the oranges first, this softens the skins and makes shredding much easier.

[MrsPennyapple]

Thanks Ethel. We do, sort of. I live on the Isle of Man and we have Shop Rite, which is a bizarre amalgamation of Waitrose, Wilkos and Iceland. With actual branded goods from the respective companies. It's very odd, and generally means that you have the basics from each of them, but not the whole range. The rule is: If you have to ask yourself "I wonder if they stock x?" the answer is normally no. I had to hunt high and low to find marjoram. That's what passes for exotic in these parts! :)

[SparkyUK]

I'm trying to find a recipe I adapted a few years ago that involved cooking the oranges whole in a slow cooker. I didn't have a slow cooker at the time so I cooked them in the oven in some water, and I think I then scooped out the insides and then chopped them in the food processor. I can't find the instrucitons anywhere, even though I'm sure I originally found the idea online. Has anyone done this or can anyone else find the recipe?

Also, for those of you who chop in the magimix, do you just chop in the bowl or do you feed it through one of the slicers?

[NuclearStandoff]

One of the recipes in the River Cottage Preserves book involves cooking the oranges whole first...

[SparkyUK]

Ah thanks, found this one. The "whole fruit method" involves cooking whole orange at a simmer for 2 - 2.5 hours. I think I'll give it a go and adapt this by slow cooking on high for 4 hours or so. Last time I actually did it in the oven and I think I remember my oranges going a bit brown as they floated at the top of the casserole. I should have given them a bit of a stir, so I will keep a better eye on them today.

[ethelb]

Where the hell do you find bergamot oranges? Do you grow your own?

[ethelb]

I'm currently doing my first batch using the Dan Leppard recipe www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/medium-cut_seville_70291

Mainly due to its chemical level of precision

[MrsPennyapple]

Well, I have made my marmalade today, but I don't think it's going to set. I used the River Cottage sliced fruit method, it said to simmer it for two hours, covered. I did question this, as how can it reduce if it's covered? Anyway, I trusted the recipe and went with it. My preserving pan doesn't have a lid so I used a different pan, which is deeper than it is wide. After I'd added the sugar and lemon juice I brought it to the boil but even after about 40 min it wasn't wrinkling, but I've had to jar it up as I need to do other things! I also have far more than the 5-6 450g jars it's supposed to make. Oh well, I'll leave it to cool and see how it looks later. If it doesn't set I'll tip it into my PROPER preserving pan tomorrow, and boil it up again. Any more suggestions anyone?

[Trills]

I would like to, because I like doing things like that, but I don't actually like marmalade, so I probably shouldn't

[ethelb]

@mrspenny did you boil the pips in the bag? Did you measure how much water you put in? The total liquid content (includign juice) should be twice the weight of the original weight of the fruit.

[MrsPennyapple]

Hi Ethel There weren't any pips. I couldn't get seville oranges, so I just bought....um...large oranges. (That's what they were labelled as in the shop!) The quantities were as per the recipe, 1kg fruit, 2kg demarera sugar, 2.5 litres water, 75ml lemon juice. So that does sound like too much liquid, doesn't it?

Would it make a difference if the lemon juice was fairly old? It was in date, but only just, and it was the last bit of the bottle.

It hasn't set, as I thought. Back in the pan tomorrow then! (Maybe with more lemon juice?)

[ethelb]

The fact that the oranges weren't sevilles mean it won't have set as the pH will be wrong. If you use other oranges you need to consider a different recipe (french orange jam recipes for example) rather than a marmalade recipe.

I've made that mistake myself

[MrsPennyapple]

Oh bum. Anything I can do to rescue it, do you think? It does taste nice, it's just runny.