Seville Marmalade - Spreadable Love

Guest post from Jar Head:

In January-February seville oranges come into season. Time for Fondue Voodoo to become assistant kitchen servant and aid in the making of the yearly batch of marmalade. FV's main squeeze is a jar-head for home made marmalade, even though it kills him a little every time.

Ingredients are fairly simple, lots of seville
oranges and a couple lemons

To make marmalade get yourself about 1.5 kg of oranges + a lemon or 2, 5 cups of water and 4 to 5 cups of white sugar and let the magic begin.

Scrub your fruit. Slice in half and juice, saving all of the liquid, seeds and membranes - you will use these later to thicken the jam.

Now comes the difficult part, scrape out the as much of the white pith from each half rind, compost the scooped out white pith. Julienne all of the rinds for the marmalade.

Place the rinds in a large pot with the reserved juice, the saved seeds and membranes in a cheesecloth or muslin bag and 5 cups of water. Slowly bring to a boil and let simmer for about 20-30 min until the rinds are softened.

Remove the membrane bag and let cool in a bowl.  Once cool enough to handle, squeeze out all of the thick pectin that has developed and add to the pot.  Add your sugar and taste - the end product will be sweeter than it tastes now, so error on the side a just a bit tart.

Bring back to a boil and leave at a high boil until it reaches 220 degrees F on a candy thermometer.  This will take about 30 min. If you don't have a thermometer you can also test by placing a plate in the freezer - test the jam by dropping a small amount on the chilled plate and see if it wrinkles when pushed with your finger - if it does it is done.

When the jam is set, you can either place in fridge or can - this recipe makes about 4-5 500 ml jars which I like to can for later (go here for canning instructions).  I process my jam for about 10 min in a water bath.

In addition to being tasty on toast, I like to use this as a base for salad dressing and anything else where sweet but tangy oranges might feel at home.

Love on a spoon