Candied Kumquats: the recipe
Jun. 13th, 2012 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjHere's the recipe for the current batch:
1. Make a sugar syrup of 5 cups each white sugar and water.
2. Select ca. 3 lb kumquats. All other things being equal, try to choose small ones, but they should be ripe, solidly orange, not soft, and unblemished.
3. Soak the kumquats in water for about a day and rinse. Using a sharp paring knife, snip off the stem end just enough to expose the pulp very slightly.
4. Put the kumquats in the syrup.
5. Bring to a slight boil, uncovered. Then cover and let cool.
6. The next day, repeat step 5. Do this every day for 7 days or until your syrup solidifies into jelly when cool. (If your kumquats have seeds and the seeds float loose during this process, skim them off. But you may simply end up with some candied seeds inside.)
7. Before the last time you heat the syrup, prepare canning jars and lids as for jelly.
8. Heat the kumquats and ladle them into your jars. If necessary, process them in a water bath to get a vacuum seal. They should keep as well as jelly does if stored approrpriately.
Out of the above-sized batch, I filled 16 4 oz jelly jars. About 2/3 of the fruits remained whole through the process, with the rest in various stages of disintegration.
When it comes down to it, this is more like a whole-fruit marmelade than a traditional candied peel. Now that I've got a repeatable result on the kumquats, I think I'll go back to peels and try lemon next. Anyone got a tree full of lemons with nice thin, unblemished peels that I could experiment with? (A tithe will be paid.)
1. Make a sugar syrup of 5 cups each white sugar and water.
2. Select ca. 3 lb kumquats. All other things being equal, try to choose small ones, but they should be ripe, solidly orange, not soft, and unblemished.
3. Soak the kumquats in water for about a day and rinse. Using a sharp paring knife, snip off the stem end just enough to expose the pulp very slightly.
4. Put the kumquats in the syrup.
5. Bring to a slight boil, uncovered. Then cover and let cool.
6. The next day, repeat step 5. Do this every day for 7 days or until your syrup solidifies into jelly when cool. (If your kumquats have seeds and the seeds float loose during this process, skim them off. But you may simply end up with some candied seeds inside.)
7. Before the last time you heat the syrup, prepare canning jars and lids as for jelly.
8. Heat the kumquats and ladle them into your jars. If necessary, process them in a water bath to get a vacuum seal. They should keep as well as jelly does if stored approrpriately.
Out of the above-sized batch, I filled 16 4 oz jelly jars. About 2/3 of the fruits remained whole through the process, with the rest in various stages of disintegration.
When it comes down to it, this is more like a whole-fruit marmelade than a traditional candied peel. Now that I've got a repeatable result on the kumquats, I think I'll go back to peels and try lemon next. Anyone got a tree full of lemons with nice thin, unblemished peels that I could experiment with? (A tithe will be paid.)
