Marmalade Recipe:
For ingredients it’s easier if I give the ratios: For every 1lb (that’s 454g for those not afflicted by random UK weights) of Seville oranges you need: 1 sweet orange, 1 lemon and 2lb of sugar. That’s it, but I wouldn’t have thought much less than 2lb of Sevilles is worth it.
Going to give the method in stages, as these can be done and then left, until the next day if needed.
Stage 1: Put fruit (sevilles on the bottom as they’ve got the thickest skins) in a pan with a lid, I use a pressure cooker but it doesn’t matter. Add some water, enough to come a couple of inches up the pan, stick lid on and bring to the boil. Cook until soft but NOT so they’re dissolving, should be able to feel them go a bit squishy if you give them a poke (with a wooden spoon unless you’ve got heatproof fingers), keep an eye on the water level during cooking, add some more if it’s getting low. Leave to cool (Can be overnight if you want).
Stage 2: Get a pyrex or ceramic dish (like a lasagne dish or summat) to put the peel in. Get another saucepan and remove the fruit into that but leave the water in the first pan. Take an orange and cut it into half or quarters (find quarters easier), then using a spoon the idea is to remove as much as possible of the fruit and (this is the hard bit) the pith from the orange, just leaving peel (it’ll never be perfect, you’ll never get off all of the pith but the more the better). As you do this put the fruit, pips and pith into the pan with the cooking liquid and the peel into the dish. The servilles are easiest as the peel is so thick, the sweet oranges and lemons can be a bastard and keep ripping but just keep on until they’re all done (this is the hardest / most time consuming / most annoying bit). If you’re not going to do stage 3 right after then cover the pan and the dish of peel.
Stage 3:
Put the pan of fruit, pith and water on to boil, if it needs a bit more water then add some, depends how juicy the oranges were. Then leave it to boil for an hour or so, add more water if it’s losing too much as steam. The idea of this is the Pectin that sets the marmalade is in the pith and pips, so boiling it releases it into the liquid. Whilst this is boiling take a sharp knife and cut the peel into strips, as thick or thin and long or short as you like, you could even throw it away and have just jelly marmalade (but you would be a heathen if you did!). Once the boiling is over allow to cool a bit and then stick a colander over the pan you intend on actually making the marmalade in and tip the pan into the colander, leave to drain for an hour or so before throwing away what’s left in the colander (I like to give it a bit of a final press with a pan lid first, get any last bits!)
Stage 4: Start to heat the liquid, add the peel to the liquid (if you feel like you’ve way too much liquid then boil some of it off first before adding the peel but it’s not very likely), stir well to mix and bring to the boil. Start adding sugar, stirring as you go,, do this fairly SLOWLY as if you tip a couple of lbs of sugar straight in it tends to go into a ball and is a bit of a bastard to break up. Once you’ve got all the sugar in and combined then boil until setting point is reached. To check this get a plate, drop a small spoonful of marmalade onto the plate and leave for 5 minutes, if it doesn’t slide when you hold the plate at an angle and has a skin on the top it’s ready. Turn off the heat and as soon as it’s cool enough pot into clean sterilised jars. Done.
PS: When it’s boiling with the sugar it will be over 100 degrees C - Be Careful!
To sterilise glass jars fill with boiling water, leave for a minute, empty and then put in a very low oven to dry.
You can pot half of it up and then add some chopped stem ginger to the rest if you like (I actually ended up using some belvoir ginger cordial last time - worked well).
