Bitter Orange Marmalade

Bitter Orange Marmalade

Makes about 6 jars

Ingredients

20 oranges

8 Meyer lemons

3 cups water

600-700g sugar

Method

Before you do anything, put two little side plates in your freezer, you’ll need them later. You also need to clean and sterilise 6 small-to-medium jars (submerge the jars and their lids in boiling water for a few minutes, then remove with tongs and leave to dry).

Making marmalade, it turns out, is an imprecise art. Which is funny because the way you slice the oranges is very precise. So let’s start with that first.

Peel all of your oranges and lemons. Use a good peeler - a sharp peeler that gets a little bit of the pith along with the oranges, but not loads of it. Once all the oranges and lemons are peeled, finely (precisely) julienne the peel into thin little matchsticks. Put these in a heavy bottomed saucepan.

Juice all the oranges and lemons and add the orange and lemon juice to the julienned skins, along with the 3 cups of water (don’t add the sugar yet). Pop on the stove.

Bring to a rapid boil and cook for 5-10 minutes, until the peel has just started to soften a little. Other places online will say to cook the peel for longer to soften it more. Don’t listen to them. You want that sweeeeet peel texture.

Add the sugar and continue to boil FAST. The amount of sugar you add will really depend on the sweetness of the oranges. I like to err on the side of under-sweet, so I recommend adding a little less to start off with (maybe about 500g) then taste it and add more if you like.

At this point it shouldn’t be necessary to stir the marmalade very much - it should still be so watery there’s no risk of it sticking to the bottom of the pan. Keep it boiling for about 20 minutes, stirring every now and then to make sure it’s not sticking to the bottom of the pan. Keep an eye on it - don’t just leave it to boil. Soon it should start to look thicker and more syrupy. Hold your nerve, you’re not done just yet.

I like reasonably runny marmalade. The peel adds so much texture that I find it nicest if the rest of the marmalade is a bit runnier. This is where your own personal preferences start to factor in. If you like thicker marmalade you might want to cook yours for longer than I do.

When is the marmalade ready to take off the heat? I wait until mine turns a deeper shade of orange and is visibly thicker (not super thick - ever-so-slightly thicker than maple syrup; not as thick as treacle. Then I grab my little plates from the freezer and put a dollop of the marmalade on them. Leave for a few minutes to see if the marmalade sets. Again, the way I make it, it really doesn’t set that much. It’s fun to lick off the plate though.

Pour it into your jars and voila! Marmalade. It’s so good it’s so fine, voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhhhh Creole lady marmaladeeeeee. Please help I’ve been singing that song for three weeks.

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