Finals are over now marmalade !

[corneygirl]

Hopefully by the time I read your responses I will have finished revising my last paper for the semester that I am putting off with this run on sentence. Hopefully tomorrow I can hide the books and notecards, shut my lap top and make the house smell good. I've been dreaming of marmalade while I'm supposed to be studying location models and other fun stuff. So here is my question ... how flexible is marmalade if I want to hot water can? Can I adapt a quick lemon ginger to a slow pectin less kind by skipping the pectin and upping the cooking time? Can I use pomelo instead of grapefruit? If I have a recipe for lemon, orange, grapefruit can I skip the lemon? You get the gist...

As you can tell by the length, I really don't want to look at this paper any more. Thanks for any advice. Now to not check for responses every 15 minutes....

PS I have canned and made jam before, just not marmalade.

[Jennalynn]

I made an amazing Lemon Ginger Marm for gifts this year. But I did use liquid pectin.

It's so good I'm hard pressed to give it away.

[geminigirl]

I think I probably made the same recipie from the Ball book?

[bushwickgirl]

I've never used pectin for marmalade, there's loads of pectin in the citrus rind. I used bitter Spanish oranges and lemons, water, ginger and sugar, cooked it down until it "wrinkled," passed the plate test and I added scotch at the end (my personal touch.) The resulting marmalade was quite firm, a gorgeous deep amber color and had a nice balance of sweet and bitter tang.

1) I'm sure you can skip the lemon, but it does add a dimension of flavor.
2) Water bath processing of marmlade is fine, it's very high acid.
3) You can sub pomelo rind for grapefruit but you have to remove the rind, get rid of the pith and use the fruit.
4) I l sliced whole oranges and lemons on a (clean) meat slicer at my favorite deli for a nominal fee, so I didn't have to bother slivering the rind, etc. I used rind, fruit, the whole nine (no seeds, though.) The Spanish oranges had a thin skin with very little pith. I suggest using a similar type of orange.
In summation, marmalade is flexible. Have fun.

[bushwickgirl]

Edit: Spanish (bitter, sour, Seville) oranges are coming into season now (December)from Florida but I don't know if you can get them where you are.

[corneygirl]

I have the jars on to sterilize! Grapefruit ginger and orange-lemon-whiskey are in order. Thanks for the advice.

CG

[MMRuth]

Grapefruit ginger sounds wonderful. I'm making my second batch of Meyer lemon marmalade in the morning.

[corneygirl]

That sounds great, the grapefruit ginger turned out pretty good for a first attempt, next time I'll use more ginger and double or triple the recipe (one grapefruit yielded about 3 half pints).