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How did I get into marmalade making, you ask? Honestly, my friend, Stephanie over at Kossma Beauty posted that she found a place to get unwaxed Seville oranges and that she had just bought some. When I heard that, I guess I went all in, because I ended up with twenty two pounds of citrus! After slicing and juicing and baking, what else could I do but make marmalade?! After all, as I found out, they're the traditional marmalade oranges! Sevilles are really something, and once you taste it, you'd never get it confused with our more common varieties of oranges here in the US. Visually, it's reminiscent of a grocery store orange, but turn the bitterness factor all the way up. I love bitter though, so it was a winner for me! The key here, besides being organic, is that the oranges are unwaxed. If you didn't know, citrus and other fruits like apples that you get at the grocery store are all waxed/coated to give them a longer shelf life (and who knows what else). Since a primary part of marmalade is using the rind, unwaxed fruit is key so you don't get any of those coatings intermixed.
Since I ended up with over twenty pounds, I had a little room for experimentation, haha. So, I looked up several marmalade recipes (although I never can follow one to a T), but found there were two main methods of making a traditional marmalade. The "whole fruit" method and the "peel/slice/juice" method. I did both (several times, haha) and far prefer the latter. Taste was the same, so it was more for the ease of prep. When I used the whole fruit method, I was in, I wouldn't call it a hurry, but kind of, ya know? So it was difficult to let the fruit cool long enough before I juiced them.
I zested the oranges (with ideally as little of the white pith as possible), juiced them, and that was about it! To make the marmalade, I found that portions of each varied slightly.
Here's how I did it:
2 pounds oranges (include zest & juice)
64 ounces filtered, structured water
4-4.5 cups sugar
Partially fill 1 sachet or homemade tea bag with lemon seeds & a few of the orange seeds (to naturally help it gel better)
Juice & zest of 1 lemon (optional)
The zest, juice, and water all go in a nice, sturdy pot (note: you don't want to use aluminum here, check out the pot I linked, affiliate code: SATIATEDBLONDE)
Once it starts to come to a boil, I added in the sugar, stirring, one cup at a time
Then, I brought it back up to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes
That was about all it took for everything to start gelling. I knew for sure when I dipped in a spoon and it coated the back nicely.
With so many batches made in such a short period of time, I was able to store some of this marmalade in the freezer, but was sure to let it cool before freezing, storing in a wide mouth jar with about two inches of headspace.
Since I had oranges everywhere, I made other things like orange curd, orange juice (and frozen orange juice cubes), candied orange peels, really anything I could think of! Are you a marmalade fan? Tell me in the comments and as always, #GetSatiated.
NOTE: Since this first marmalade adventure, I have made more marmalade than I ever thought possible...it seems I make it once a month now! I have made standard citrus (think lemon/lime) and also a sweeter orange marmalade. But, my new favorite thing to make is what I call "scrap marm" (a post with details on that coming soon!).
Watch my IG Reel on my marmalade adventure here:
Luckily, I got ahold of some organic, unwaxed Sevilles...but they still need washed.
