mandarin marmalade

mandarin marmalade

• 1 Jun 2020

We have a lovely cleaner at work called Yan and last week she gave me a bag of home grown mandarins which she assured me were very sweet. I looked through my recipes and looked for ways to use my bounty. Last year I made some flourless blood orange cakes for Passover that were supposed to be made with Mandarin marmalade. I'd like to remake them so the first thing I did was make a batch of mandarin marmalade. 




I looked online for inspiration but in the end adapted my recipe for blood orange and vanilla marmalade. You need to start the recipe the night before as there is washing, peeling, slicing and soaking to be done before cooking the marmalade.



I discovered that mandarin marmalade takes less time to cook than orange marmalade. Once the sugar was added I put the timer on for 30 minutes and on a whim decided to check the temperature just before the timer went off. It had already reached it's setting point and my jam jars had yet to be boiled!



I quickly boiled the kettle and before too long I'd filled 2 jars with the marmalade with a little leftover for the cook. With a freshly baked loaf of 'no-knead' rye bread cooling I had the perfect reason to slice it then slathered said slice with butter and some of the marmalade. It was absolutely delicious both the bread and the jam.



If you'd like to make your own mandarin marmalade, here's the recipe for you.  For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. 

Mandarin Marmalade - makes 2 jars
Ingredients
600g mandarins, washed
¾ tsp sea salt flakes, plus 1 pinch extra
Water, to cover
Granulated sugar
The juice of ½ lemon 

You’ll need to start this recipe the day before.

The night before, peel the mandarins, reserving half the peel. Discard the rest or zest and freeze the grated rind to use later. Using a sharp knife finely shred the peel and then slice the peeled mandarins in half removing any seeds. Don’t throw out the seeds as you’ll use them in the marmalade. Coarsely chop the flesh reserving any juice. Place the chopped mandarin, shredded rind and juice into a bowl. Add the salt then cover the mandarins with water and leave the bowl covered in the fridge to sit overnight. 

The following day weigh the contents of the bowl and then in a separate bowl, weigh out half the amount of sugar. Place the reserved seeds into a piece of muslin and tie securely. Place the mandarin and liquid plus seeds into the widest heavy-based pot you have. Bring the mix to the boil then lower to medium and cook the mandarins for about 30 minutes or until the skins have softened. Meanwhile, place 2 saucers into the freezer. You'll need these for later. Fish out the bag of seeds, then add the sugar to the pan and stir until completely dissolved. Cook for a further 20 minutes or until the marmalade reaches its setting point ~ 105°C

To test the marmalade's setting point, place a teaspoon of the marmalade onto one of the cold saucers and allow it to cool. The marmalade should “jell” on the plate and not run when the saucer is tipped. If the marmalade fails to jell, cook for another few minutes before checking again.

Once the marmalade has reached setting point, take it off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and an extra pinch of salt. Allow the marmalade to completely cool before spooning into hot sterilized jars. If you like, you can loosely tighten the lids on the jars before simmering them in hot water for about 10 minutes to form a vacuum. Allow the jars to completely cool before fully tightening the lids. 

Store the jars in a cool dark place, then refrigerate once opened.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian