Try Our Seville Orange Mmmarmalade!

View fullsize

What makes our Seville Orange Marmalade quite possibly the best marmalade you’ll ever have? First, the fact that my mother-in-law taught me how to make it, who in turn learned to make it from her mother. This proves that my gran’s recipe is tried, tested and delicious! Yet, what truly makes our marmalade taste great, is the hand shredding, top quality ingredients and that we take no shortcuts. 

If that doesn’t convince you, my marmalade won a Bronze at the World Marmalade Awards (hosted in Cumbria, UK) and you will find it at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in November.

View fullsize

Why you’ll love it

Our marmalade is made from certified organic Seville oranges and they make all the difference. Aside from the health benefits, organic oranges have a better flavour as they have a slightly chunky peel so you get the sweet and the bitter combined, and set more quickly than non-organic oranges – leading to a better quality marmalade.  

The fresher your oranges are when you make your marmalade the better. Over ripe fruit tend to lose some of their pectin so you will have to cook your marmalade down too far in order to achieve set. Seville oranges are generally in season from January to February, so we spend a bit of time creating our marmalade then to ensure the best quality marmalade is produced.

The Process

We make our marmalade the traditional way, with the peel of the orange being hand shredded. If you are looking to enter your marmalade into competitions, you always want to follow the two-day process.  You will end up with a brighter marmalade that is more appealing from an appearance perspective for the judges, trust me as for the past two years I have had the pleasure of being a judge at the Mad for Marmalade Awards at Fort York.

Our marmalade uses all the parts of the orange. The skin is shredded and softened in water, the membrane and the seeds are added to the marmalade to release the natural pectin of the oranges and achieve the perfect set for the marmalade.

Orange You Glad You Tried It

While we believe there’s absolutely no wrong way to eat marmalade (straight from the jar?), we have a few suggestions for you to try out. Our marmalade tastes fabulous as a cheesecake topping and tastes equally as amazing on toast combined with a splash of butter.  Let your taste buds decide.

Interested in our products? Shop our selection.

Want to grow your food business? Manning Canning Kitchens can help!

Written by Farhana Choudry, Intern

How to choose the right marmalade recipe for you?

There are seemingly countless ways to prepare seville orange marmalade and with the right group of people, this topic could lead to a rather long and heated debate. Some of it comes down to personal preference - do you like a fine, medium or chunky peel, would you prefer a low sugar jam if it means compromising the perfect set? But some of it also comes down to science and what constitutes a perfect marmalade.

Here are some things to consider when looking for the perfect marmalade recipe for you.

1) Choosing your Seville Oranges

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where you can actually choose your Seville Oranges, consider yourself lucky ;). In previous years, I have been lucky enough to get my hands on organic sevilles and have noticed a couple of difference when using them to make marmalade. So if you are wondering if there are benefits to going organic over and above health benefits - there are! They definitely have better flavour and they set more quickly than non-organic. Overall leading to a higher quality marmalade.

The fresher they are when you make your marmalade the better. Over ripe fruit tend to lose some of their pectin so you will have to cook your marmalade down too far in order to achieve set if your oranges are old.

And you may not know this but Sevilles come in several sizes if you are buying them in bulk, this is a good thing to know. In Canada you can get 88, 72 or 56's. The smallest are the 88's and the largest the 56's. If you are following a recipe it is always a good idea to use one that goes by weight and not number of oranges as this can lead to varying results.

2) Preparing your peel

There are so many different ways to prepare your peel and this is truly where personal taste comes into play. If you prefer a less bitter marmalade you can peel the skin off like would would an apple, getting as little of the pith as possible and shred it super fine or you can leave it nice and chunky. Just keep in mind the chunkier the peel, the darker your marmalade will end up as it will take longer to soften it. If you find a recipe you like the sounds of but want to alter how you prepare your peel, just keep in mind it may affect how long you need to cook it in order to soften the peel.

3) Soaking the peels overnight

Recipes vary and you will find as you comb through them, that some suggest you prepare your peels one day, soak them overnight and cook the marmalade on Day 2, while others have you do it all in one day. How do you know which is the better option?

For me it is a simple answer. If you are looking to enter your marmalade into competitions you always want to follow the 2 day process. You will end up with a brighter marmalade that is more appealing from an appearance perspective for the judges. I also find, that when you split the tasks over 2 days it is a lighter workload on each day.

But if you are pressed for time and you only have the one day available in your calendar to make marmalade, don't worry about it. You will still end up with a lovely tasting marmalade if you do it all in one day.

4) Open pan vs lidded pan  

Yes, recipes will vary on what type of pan you should be making your marmalade in. Some swear by the preserving pan, which is generally not lidded, has outwardly tapered edges and is quite often made of copper. While others will swear by using a pot with a lid.

Why the difference in opinions and which route should you go? I have made marmalade both ways. With the open pan, (especially if it is copper just remember to not use it until you have added sugar to the mixture. Use a different pot to soften the peels) you will notice a high bitter note to your marmalade. You may also notice that the liquid in your marmalade evaporates more quickly and you end up with a higher concentration of peel to liquid ratio when jarring. With the open pan method your peels also may lean towards a chewier consistency.

The lidded pan obviously contains the evaporation which means it will not reduce as quickly. You will have a less bitter flavour and a lower ratio of peel to liquid when jarring.

5) How much sugar should the recipe have?

There are wide swings in the amount of sugar stated in recipes that I have tried over the years. If you want a marmalade lower in sugar you will have to keep in mind that your marmalade will not achieve a proper set and will be softer in consistency. It will also have a shorter shelf life which means it most likely will not last you til next marmalade season. 

6) Testing for set

I am not going to go into the details of how each of these tests are performed in this post. I am just going to give my opinions on which method I think works best when making marmalade. You can use the plate test, a thermometer r

Personally, I prefer the spoon test. This gives me the closest relationship with the marmalade. This may sound strange, but I think this is important. When I can see the consistency of the marmalade beginning to change and I think I am getting close to set, I dip my spoon in every 5 minutes or so and check on how the drops are falling off the spoon. I find this visual way of checking gives me the ability to achieve the set I prefer.

Trusted marmalade recipes I have used in the past with great success:

Lower sugar - Nigel Slater shares his marmalade recipe which is lower on the sugar side which leads to the softer set and shorter shelf life I mentioned earlier

Smaller batch - Vivien Lloyd shares her small batch marmalade recipe. This recipe leaves you with a bright marmalade with a perfect set

One day marmalade - Canadian Living provides a recipe for those that want to get it all done in one day

Tips for award winning marmalade

With the deadline for the The World's Original Marmalade Awards right around the corner and with Seville Oranges currently in season (I just saw them being sold for $1.99/lb), I thought it would be a good time to share some of the things I have learned over the years having entered my jams, jellies and marmalades into several different competitions.

Let's start off with the judging criteria. How exactly will your marmalade be judged? Now each competition may vary slightly, but they all have similar themes.

The Royal Winter Fair - Your preserves will be judged based on the following criteria:

Visual appeal

• do you have the correct headspace
• clarity - they are looking for a clear jelly, a bright coloured jam, a solid amount of fruit
• suspension - is your peel/fruit distributed equally throughout the jar

Aroma

• can they smell the different ingredients in your product
• is it a nice clean smell
• are there any off notes

Texture

• have you achieved the desire set
• is your peel too hard or is it chewy but soft
• is it spreadable (think of Goldie Locks and the 3 bears here - they want spreadable but not too firm. Soft but not runny)

Flavour

• is the first thing they taste the fruit used to make the marmalade, jam or jelly
• is it a clean taste or has it been muddied by overcooking
• too sweet, too bitter, etc

Originality

• are you showing them a combination they haven't seen before

Each category is marked out of 10 for a total score of 50.

Now for The World's Original Marmalade Awards, the criteria is slightly different. They judge the following broken down like this;

• Appearance (2 points)
• Colour (5 points)
• Consistency, texture, quality (6 points)
• Flavour, aroma (7 points)

To get a gold you need a score of between 19.5 - 20. Silver 18-19, Bronze 16-17.5 and Merit 12-15.

So now that you know what you are going to be judged on, how do you go about creating a marmalade that stands a chance of winning? 

Marmalades can be made from a variety of citrus fruits; grapefruit, lemons, meyer lemons, blood oranges, limes, etc. But for this particular example we are going to assume that you are making a traditional marmalade made from Seville Oranges. Seville Oranges have a short season and usually arrive in Canada in January or February and can be found in stores for approximately 3-4 weeks. They make a great marmalade because of their high pectin content and their peel has a very interesting bitter flavour. 

1. Start with using organic seville oranges if possible. Because you are including the peel as well as the meat of the fruit, it does make a difference to the overall flavour when the peel has not come into contact with pesticides. Scrub each orange gently with a vegetable brush and then dry completely.
2. Prepare your oranges carefully. Marmalade is not a quick jam. So give it the time it deserves and you will be rewarded.

• Cut your oranges in half and juice. Collect all the seeds so you can put them in the cheese cloth along with the pith and membrane. You may also want to consider supreming your orange segments and cutting it into small pieces.

• Using a spoon, scoop out the membrane and place in a bowl with the seeds. Be consistent with the amount of pith you scoop out for a nice uniform peel

• Cut your peels in half and flatten, then trim off any points or curves so you can create a nice uniform rind size.

• you can decide here if you want a chunky peel or a fine cut peel, but ensure you are consistent

3. Soak your peel in an equal amount of water for 1-2 minutes. This removes some of the bitterness from the peel. Drain the water and do not keep it.

4. Cook your peel with a little bit of baking soda. This will help keep your peel nice and bright once it is cooked. Remember to simmer gently. Peels that are cooked on a high boil tend to get tough.

5. Warm your sugar in the oven before adding it to your fruit. This reduces the chance of crystallization of the sugar in your marmalade. It helps it to dissolve quickly. If you can't warm it in an oven, be sure to allow the sugar to completely dissolve before bringing to a boil

6. Consider making your marmalade in a copper pot (keeping in mind not to soften the peel in the copper pot on it's own. Copper pots require sugar to always be present). Copper is an amazing conductor of heat and allow you to cook your jam down to the desired consistency quicker and without cooking away too much of the flavour of the fruit.

7. Add a small amount of unsalted butter to your marmalade. This reduces the amount of foam as it cooks and reduces the amount of skimming your final product will require. Not properly skimming off the foam can lead to a cloudy marmalade.

8. Allow your marmalade to cool for at least 5 minutes in the pot and off the heat before ladling into previously sterilized jars. This helps to reduce the fruit floating to the top of the jars and leads to nicer suspension.

9. Accurately measure your headspace. Especially in North American competitions, this will be noted and you will lose points if you leave too much or too little headspace.

10. If a jar doesn't seal properly it doesn't matter how delicious your marmalade may be, your entry will still be disqualified.

Now if you are feeling inspired, you still have time to make some marmalade and enter it into The World's Original Marmalade Awards or if you live in Toronto, consider Mad For Marmalade, Crazy for Citrus. 

For a few other pointers you can check out my Marmalade video here. 

GOOD LUCK!

Marmalade - Superfine, Fine, Medium or Thick Cut

Superfine peel - best obtained with a zester

When you make your marmalade, do you slice the peel real thin?

Do you zest it very slowly, or cut it while you grin?

Eat that thick cut, thin cut marmalade, but tell me when I ask,

when you make your marmalade, do you cut the peel real fast?

Fine cut peel - best obtained by cutting the peel off with a sharp knife and then chopping it very fine

Medium Cut Peel - best obtained by juicing the orange and then removing all of the membrane from inside the peel, and then cutting into medium size chunks.

Thick cut peel - best obtained by juicing the orange and then removing all of the membrane from inside the peel, and then cutting into thick size chunks.

3 tips for delicious marmalade

My mother in law makes a mean traditional seville orange marmalade. Perhaps it is because she is Bristish and it is in her dna? Whatever the case, her marmalade is the first that I have ever liked. Generally speaking I have found marmalade to be too bitter but the marmalade that she packs into her jars has a deep orange flavour that over rides the bitterness.

There are a few tips I have learned through making marmalade at her side and a few I have picked up along the way as I experimented with marmalades made with meyer lemons, pink grapefruit and even limes.

If you are planning on making marmalade, I have a few tips to share:

• briefly soak your citrus peels or zest in water before making your marmalade. This helps remove some of the bitterness from the peels
• add between 1/2 tsp to a full tsp of unsalted butter to the marmalade as it cooks. This will reduce the amount of foam that needs to be skimmed off at the end. You will end up with a nice clear marmalade.
• Take the little extra time to supreme your oranges. You will notice a hige difference as the final product will taste more of fruit and less of the pith.

No go forth and make marmalade