I've been tossing our peels into the dump trailer and then thought - wait a minute I can candy them!
So I checked out a couple of recipes on the internet, thought most of them used too much sugar, and came up with a good proportion of peel to sugar and water. Then I dipped some of them once they were dry in dark chocolate.
I use organic cane sugar. My friend Kathy asked me if I ever use honey, and I had not but I will try that in the next batch.
So here is the picture and the recipe.
4 good size oranges (you can use grapefruit, lemon or any citrus really). I had about 3-4 cups of loosely piled sliced peel.
2 cups of organic sugar for syrup
2 cups of water for syrup
1 cup of organic sugar for rolling
Rinse the peels well, and slice into about 1/2 inch thicknesses (this is really up to you as to how thin you want them. I did NOT scrape the pith away. The navels peel fairly easily.
Bring about 4 cups of water to a rolling boil, dump peels in count to 60 and drain. Repeat twice. This removes bitterness.
Bring the 2 cups each of the sugar and water to a rolling boil and dump in the peels. Stir, and drop to a low simmer. It will take about 2 hours and the syrup will reduce down about half. The peels should look a little translucent. Remove from heat and let cool in syrup.
Arrange a rack or a large tray and a large container with the final 1 cup of sugar in it. I air dried my peels over 2 days - inside. You have the option of drying in the oven at 200 degrees until they loose most of their limpness.
Once the peels are cool in the syrup drain - reserving the syrup for another use.
I laid out syran wrap on a big tray and using 2 forks dumped bunches at once in the sugar, stirred and then moved to the tray repeating until all the peels were coated nicely. Try for single layer but you can gently move them around during the drying to ensure all are dried.
Chocolate dipping is optional. I used a good quality of dark chocolate (I'm going to try making my own in the near future with a recipe from my friend Kathy).
I saved the left syrup and am going to make orange chicken one night this week.
Store in a covered container for 2-3 weeks (if they last that long). I did see that some people have frozen them with success.
Next I'm going to candy some of our pink grapefruit peel :-)
Replies
Nice. It would be great to find out how they taste with Honey (from McClendon or Singh Farms :) or maybe an herb like Stevia...Great phytochemical nutrition packed idea :) Thx, Catherine !
Jeff - I may try some of them with Stevia - it won't crystalize like sugar, but should be sweet tasting.
I started playing around with growing and using stevia some years ago when folks were mentioning to me how much the over-processed version had the artificial after-taste. Love the look on visitor's faces when I have them bite a piece of fresh leaf :-)
I did a search to see if I could find a recipe for boiling sugar cane in water to make the sugar syrup, but I guess it's not that easy.
This is my first year growing stevia. I have some sprouting inside the house. There were not very many seeds in the packet and right now it looks like a 50% germination rate.
Stevia is a challenge to sprout, Grace - I would say 50% is an excellent result.
RE: the Sugar Cane - I have not tried that either, but the issue is you would need a LOT of cane to water. The sugar cane juice is what is evaporated to produce the crystals (I'm sure you know that :-), so the ratio is quite dramatic I would speculate - probably in 50s to 100s of cane to produce a tiny amount of crystal, then you are kind of reconstituting to produce the syrup. If you were able to extract the pure sugar cane juice, you could boil the peel in that liquid and get your syrup.
I think Grllscout indicated she had read about someone using an old wash machine wringer to run sugar cane through. The real SC juicers I've seen pictures of have that kind of look.
They look delicious, Catherine. I rarely make dessert, but when I do, I usually think to myself that some candied citrus peel would be just the thing as a garnish. Unfortunately, it's usually the same day I'm making the dessert, so I'm out of luck! I'm glad to know that the candied peels can be frozen, so I can make some up and have it ready for those special occasions.
Leanne, Deane is a true chocaholic and I seldom cook desserts except at the holidays, but I just "needed" to recycle some peels instead of throwing them away. I put some in the compost and I use the peels from one orange in our dish water (we sink wash dishes - no dishwasher) to aid in cleaning, and I'm steeping some in vinegar for a cleaning solution. but heck its food! :-)
Those do look good.