Bitter Orange Marmelade

Bitter orange marmelade was in my mind reserved for the British breakfast. I was quite wrong.

After our family trip to Sicily a couple of years ago, my wife invited me to a Sicilian cooking course for my birthday.

Seville vs. Sicily

No one wanted to do a marmelade since this is not really cooking. Since I didn't react fast enough, I was picked to do - among other things - a marmelade out of bitter oranges from Sicily.

When you buy a bitter marmelade in a store, the oranges used are the ones from Seville in Spain. Personally, I like the ones from Sicily better, just because... everything from Sicily is better.

Seeds, seeds, seeds

Since the bitter oranges from Sicily are only available for a couple of weeks a year (usually from end of January), I do the marmelade out of 8 to 10 kg of oranges. It is actually quite a mess with all the oranges, peel and juice. And seeds…

Sicilian bitter oranges are full of them.

But the result is well worth it. If you like it less sweet, just add less sugar.

Note that I am cheating a bit since I am not using the pectin in the seeds and in the white skin of the orange. But I learned that gelling sugar does the trick too and the gelling process is more consistent every time.

Ingredients

1 kg Sicilian bitter oranges

1 lemon

500 g gelling sugar (approx)

Preparation

Wash and dry oranges and lemons.

Peel half oranges with the peeler like apples. Make sure to leave the white peel. Cut the orange peel of approximately half the oranges into 1-2 mm narrow strips and put them into a bowl. Add water to cover and boil the peel strips gently for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain the water and put the cooked strips aside.

Squeeze all oranges and the lemon (makes approx. 500 ml).

Add the cooked peels to the juice and weigh the juice/peels. Add the same weight of gelling sugar to the pot and let it boil slowly for a couple of minutes till the fluid gets sticky. Careful, it foams and rises quickly. Then put the pot aside briefly until the foam has subsided and continue cooking. Pour the finished marmalade into the prepared jars while boiling hot and close them immediately. Place them on the lids for about 5 minutes so that the orange strips spread in the jar. Let it get cold upside down.