Tastebud Chicago

A few pints of finished Marmalade.

A few weeks ago we lamented how difficult it was to make your own marmalade. It turns out, pleasant little English women agree. The little English women didn’t give up though, they persevered, and preserved. With a little bit of innovation, they decided to can up pre-chopped seville oranges, with a marmalade recipe on the back.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why the sun never set on the British Empire. Innovation! Determination! 8 pounds of sugar! Yes, the recipe on a can of “Ma-made Canned Seville Oranges” calls for four pounds of sugar per batch of marmalade, since we decided to do two batches at once, that meant a whopping 8 pounds of pure sugar.

We started early Sunday morning. Our friend Tish came over. This is an honest to goodness pleasant woman of British descent. We thought her presence would not only be pleasant, but also give the whole proceeding an air of Miss Marple like sophistication. I ran to Jewel and picked up the sugar, stopped at the Ace hardware on Lincoln to buy 12 pint jars, and then we got started.

We ordered the Ma-made canned oranges two weeks ago from shopenglandonline.com. We thought for sure we’d have to seek out a recipe to go along with the cans, but we didn’t…Ma-made printed it right on the side of the can. I guess there isn’t much call for a giant can of sliced seville oranges without a marmalade recipe printed on the side.

The recipe is pretty straight forward. The whole process took us about an hour or so. The kitchen smelled great the whole time. It got a teeny bit tricky towards the end, we weren’t sure how to tell if the marmalade had “set” enough to put in the jars. The can suggested a “wrinkle test,” where you put a small amount of it on a plate to cool, then run your finger across it. If it wrinkles, it’s ready. We weren’t sure the degree to which wrinkles were necessary, so we sort of winged it. It turned out we took it off the heat at just the right time.

Ladling the scalding hot jelly into jars was as painful as it sounds. All of us came away with at least one small jelly burn. One of the great things about spooning the jelly in hot is that it sterilizes the jars for you. As long as you heat the jars up a bit with hot tap water, they won’t break when you pour the hot marmalade in them. Put a lid on, and wait a few minutes. As the jar cools, the little bit of air in it compresses, which eventually pulls the pop top of the lid down. You have an officially sealed jar. Tish gave a jar of it to her Mom, an actual British subject. The review was good, “It remind me of marmalade in England.” Huzzah!

We made 11 pints of marmalade that day, at a cost of around $60, so around $5 per pint. We didn’t really save any money, but we certainly didn’t lose any either, plus it was super fun. Any amount of money is worth the thrill of a jelly burn and answering the typical “happy-monday-what’d-you-do-this-weekend” question with “not much, just made 11 pints of marmalade.”

For more pictures of the process, check out our flickr set.