The Preserver's Year

Chimera

kippers wrote: »

Sorry about the delay replying.

Rhubarb Jam:

I chop in to chucks and cover with the same weight of sugar and leave over night (i think this draws out the water from the rhubarb)

In the morn i put the whole lot in the pan and heat slowly until you can't see any sugar chystals on the back of your wooden spoon. I then boil vigorously until the setting point is reached. I sometimes add 1tsp of lemon juice if it's not reaching it's setting point.

It's as easy as that[/QUOT
Thanks..I made some rhubarb and ginger jam the other week... lovely, but thinking I will try just rhubarb.

Chimera

Made Red Onion Marmalade today. Not too sure I did it exactly right, wasn't quite the brown colour I was looking for, but cooked for ages. Cooling now - hopefully it will be yummy - as it took ages!!!

kirsty822001

:j I am going to have a go at making that too, thankyou Kippers. Just harvested some rhubarb out my garden and always make rhubarb and raspberry crumble but only I like it!! Never made jam before but i did make 2 lots of spiced apple chutney for the first time last year. I am still eating it and its lovely.:D
thanks again for jam recipe

ampersand

Justamum wrote: »

The first lot I bought were £2.49 for 3lbs. I bought two bags, but didn't quite use a whole one (and I made 8 jars) so I put the rest in the freezer, then last week they were all reduced to £1.25 for the 3lb bags, so I bought two more to go in the freezer! At least if I run out of marmalade during the year I can still make some - or I might have enough to make some next season, then buy next year's at the reduced rate for the freezer.

##########
Ignorant question - I had no idea you could freeze citrus fruit. Do you just put it in whole? I have held onto the rinds from my morning orange, to use for choc. orange peel - but haven't actually used them and they have been composted to make room for other things.

floyd

I froze 2 x 2lb of seville oranges whole in Jan and tried to make Seville orange jelly (shred free marmalade) last week but it was a disaster
I followed a recipe that is on here somewhere and it just turned into a very thick goo, not like overcooked marmalade when it becomes solid but incredibly sticky and far too sweet.

Gutted

ampersand

I did rather think along these lines. Others may have different experiences. Hopefully we'll both learn something new.

Justamum

floyd wrote: »

I froze 2 x 2lb of seville oranges whole in Jan and tried to make Seville orange jelly (shred free marmalade) last week but it was a disaster
I followed a recipe that is on here somewhere and it just turned into a very thick goo, not like overcooked marmalade when it becomes solid but incredibly sticky and far too sweet.

Gutted

It might not have anything to do with the freezing though. I had some lemons in the freezer for ages and made lemon marmalade out of them and it was fine.

ampersand

Might it be to do with the thickness of pith - less on lemons? Can imagine thick pith thawing as mush. Will experiment today and see.

Justamum

Just found a couple of bits of info which might be useful ampersand.

The first one is from the BBC Good Food site -

"Freezing Freezing tends to reduce the pectin levels so it's a good idea to add the juice of one large lemon (lemon is also naturally very high in pectin) to each 500g/1lb 2oz of fruit if making marmalade from frozen oranges."


This one is from The Cottage Smallholder -


"Seville oranges will survive happily in the fridge for at least a week. They keep for months in the freezer and, if you have the room, you can stash them and make fresh marmalade throughout the year."

This last one is from an ezine article -

Seville oranges freeze beautifully. You don not need to anything with them apart from wash them, stick them in a bag and out them in the freezer. When you run out of marmalade you fcan cook them from frozen

floyd

That's exactly what I did with freezing and adding lemon juice but maybe they just aren't suitable for making jelly after freezing. I have no clue