Blood Orange Marmalade

Feb 24, 2021

Hello friends! How are you? I hope you’ll excuse me for not sharing any new recipes last week. To be honest, I just couldn’t find the energy or the inspiration. I had hoped that taking the week off would allow my mind the space and time to come up with new creations, but it wasn’t meant to be. That said, I did make Blood Orange Marmalade. And, not to blow my own horn or anything, but it’s pretty damn good.

At least I’m coming back with a bang, eh?

why make blood orange marmalade?

Why not! Besides the fact that blood oranges are bloody delicious, here’s why you should make this:

• the blood orange season is devastatingly short, and making them into marmalade is a great way to prolong the season! It cheers me up just knowing I have a little jar of blood oranges hiding in my fridge.

• blood oranges lend themselves extremely well to marmalade making because of their high pectin content – meaning you don’t have to add any extra ingredients. Pectin naturally occurs in the peel of the oranges and, when combined with sugar and acid, firms up to give this marmalade its jammy texture.

• there are only three ingredients in this seasonal treat: blood oranges, sugar, and a little lemon juice. Well, there’s four if you count water.

• it’s truly going to up your breakfasting. Never again will you have a boring old lackluster slice of toast. Really, it’s a game changer.

Now, shall we?

how to make marmalade

Let’s go through it all step-by-step. You can do this.

It all starts with two beautiful blood oranges. I washed mine and cut off the ends.

With the help of a sharp knife, we need to peel the rind off, without peeling away any of the pith. The pith – the white soft part that surrounds the orange – is quite bitter and we’ll deal with that later.

I had quite a bit of pith stuck to my peels, but sliced it off gently with my knife. When you get down to just the orange peel, you’ll see little dimples/dots – that’s what we’re aiming for.

Once pith-less, we slice our peels into little matchsticks. They don’t need to be uniform in size, just small and thin.

Now, our little matchsticks need to be boiled to remove any lingering bitterness. Because we’re thorough, we’re going to boil them for 10-minutes, three times in a row. After the first boiling, the water will be all yellow, and after the third, it’ll be significantly less so – this is perfect!

While the peels are boiling, we prepare the orange flesh. We need to remove the white core in the centre and remaining pith from around the orange. It’s also best to try remove as much of the white skin from between the segments as possible – but there’s no need to be too fussy about it.

The final ingredients – orange flesh, sugar, lemon juice, and water – get added to the pot with our triple boiled orange peels. And now we cook it down! In about 40-minutes, we’ll have a big ole jar of marmalade to show for our efforts here today. It’s literally as easy as that!

Happy preserving, friends! xo

PS: in the notes section below I’ve included what to do if you’ve overcooked/undercooked your marmalade. We’ve all been there and everything is fixable – it’s okay!