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My younger daughter Charlotte loves mandarin oranges. While the peel to fruit ratio of these small, juicy, sweet oranges doesn’t quite hit 1:1, at three dollars a pound, I do pay quite a lot for peels. And although compost can save the world, I would like to do something with all ofthose peels, especially since I buy organic mandarinsat the farmer’s market, where vendors do not coat their produce with “food-grade” wax like the grocery stores do (blech).
You can also make candied citrus peels with lemons, limes, grapefruits and other types of oranges, however, the very loose peel of mandarinsmakes cutting it away from the fruit very easy.
Ingredients
- 5 or 6 mandarin oranges
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup sugar
I buy bulk sugarin eithera my own container (a glass jar) or a homemade cloth produce bag.
Directions
1. Without piercing the fruit, cut through the mandarin peel and remove strips about 1/4- to 1/2-inch wide. Don’t worry about making them uniform. Use a vegetable peeler to quickly remove strips from the intact citrus an leave the bitter pith behind.
2. If you have any pith on the peels, use your knife to slice away most of it. If you’ve used a knife to remove the peels rather than a vegetable peeler, this step takes a bit of time. I watched Downton Abbey while I worked away, pausing each time Charles Blake appeared on screen. (Please, if you live in the UK, don’t tell me which man, if any, Mary chooses.) As you can see below, I didn’t remove all the pith. That’s fine. (It may help to know that my finished peels weighed 4 ounces.)
3. Add the peels to a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for about 25 minutes. The water turns very orange almost immediately.This step eliminates bitterness (in the peels that is, although the resulting intense citrus scent might improve one’s attitude as well). Drain peels. Find something to do with the fragrant orange water (water your plants, spray it near the kitty litter box).
4. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 water in the pot and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add peels. When they begin to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Avoid stirring; this may break the delicate peels (as I discovered).
5. Remove citrus peels with a slotted spoon and spread out on a drying rack. I set mine out overnight and they still felt a bit wet and sticky in the morning, so I placed the drying rack on a cookie sheet in my oven all day (the pilot light keeps things toasty)wherethey dried out and no longer felt so sticky.
6. We ate all of these immediately. But they do keep well in a jar. Toss them in sugar first to keep them from sticking.
I really did not feel up to making these the other night. I started late and I was tired. But when I tried them the next day, theytasted fantastic, like a gumdrop with an intense orange flavor—a real orange flavor derived from actual oranges!
Last night Ifed Etheldreda, my kombucha mother, and I dropped a few of these candied orange peels into my kombucha bottles for the secondary fermentation. I look forward to tasting that in a couple of days.
Thanks to Mrs. M for the initial idea 🙂
What do you do with citrus peels?
Candied Citrus Peels
Make these with oranges, grapefruit, lemons or limes
Ingredients
- 5 or 6 mandarin oranges
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup sugar
Directions
1. Without piercing the fruit, cut through the mandarin peel and remove strips about 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch wide. Don’t worry about making themuniform.
Update: Or use a vegetable peeler to quickly remove strips from the intact citrus an leave the bitter pith behind.
2. Use your knife to slice away most of the pith. [Skip this part if you use the vegetable peeler trick!]
3. Add the peels to a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for about 25 minutes. Drain.
4. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 water in the pot and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add peels. When they begin to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Remove citrus peels with a slotted spoon to a drying rack. Allow to dry overnight.
6. To store, toss in additional sugar and keep in an air-tight jar.
