Saturday, November 6, 2010

Marmalade

I know how to make marmalade and have been Googling for a good basic recipe and I swear, my mum and I are complete cowboys.
So, rather than lead you astray, here is a proper recipe:
http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/preserves/how-to-make-marmalade.html

The best thing about marmalade is that it always has enough 'setting agent' because lemons made of 30% of the stuff, so no worries about ending up with a runny sauce and running to the shops to buy jam setting.

Cowboy version follows:

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Ingredients:
-Citrus
-Sugar, theoretically same weight as citrus

- Bung your citrus (lemon, lime, orange (seville is good, blood is interesting), cumquat, bergamot, mandarin etc) through the cutting blade on the food processor (older lemons are good as less pith (white)). Fill your pot only 1/3 to 1/2 full, or you'll be cooking for longer.

- Soak overnight with minimum water to cover fruit.

- Next day, chuck on stove and simmer till fruit is tender - can take a while, fish out pips towards the end (the proper recipes tell you to put these in muslin at the beginning - pffft, they float). Also fish out any really large citrus bits that are unattractive, slice artistically/ finely - whatever.

- put saucer in freezer.

- bung in sugar - theoretically the same weight as the fruit, but doesn't matter - much less is fine - say 1/4+ of the weight of citrus, then to taste. theoretically pre-heating -pffft ... poppycock I say.

- Cook for 40 mins or longer.

- Sterilise jars: In the last twenty minutes, find glass jars and their lids, put in pot, cover with cool to warm water and put the pot lid on, bring to boil, boil for 10 mins and then turn off heat. When the marmalade is ready, fish out, tip water out, chuck on newspaper, should dry themselves with the heat. Leave on newspapers so you don't make much mess pouring marmalade.

- To test if its ready, take a cold plate from the freezer and dribble some of the marmalade on it, if it 'sets' ie. has a 'skin' when you run your finger through it, its ready. If you're not using a cold plate, don't burn yourself!
- If its liquid, you need to cook more to get rid of water, or add a bit more sugar. Lick plate to clean it and return to freezer.

- When its at setting point, think about adding liquor. I don't like it.

- Put marmalade in jars and immediately put lids on.

- If you want it to keep for years, put the jars back into the water pot (water level to just under the lids), bring to the boil and then turn heat off and allow to cool in pot.
- If you can't be bothered with sterilising the full jars, just put the jars in the fridge, should still last a year or so.

Enjoy, label if desired (marker pen or Fowlers jam labels from the supermarket), distribute to friends.
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Jam is exactly the same concept, but you need to include some of the following:
-unripe fruit as it has more pectin
-lemon
-apple
-jam setter = same as pectin
Best to have at least several lemons on hand.
Delia Smith shows you how to make marmalade in simple illustrated steps.
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