A Little Sunshine in a Half Pint Jar

A well known (albeit odd) song by the Beatles starts off with these weird lyrics:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Now to be frank with you, while we do have tangerine trees as we talked about in This Post from Last Month, we do NOT have marmalade skies.  As a matter of fact, the skies lately have been slate grey and gloomy, especially early Saturday morning.  But the song got me thinking.  We can brighten the skies, so to speak, by making some Tangerine Marmalade.  I googled several different recipes and finally decided to use the one from This Blog Site. 

I picked a bucket of tangerines off of the tree and washed them, scrubbing them to remove grime and any dust/dirt.  This is important, since you are eating the entire fruit.  I was reading something yesterday during lunch about a guy who talked of his weird eating habits.  He said that he ate the entire apple - seeds, core and stem and also did the same thing with oranges and lemons.  He did mention that when eating bananas, he did NOT eat the banana peel.  Anyway, in making marmalade, you DO eat the peel of the tangerine, but you take out the seeds.  

I stacked the tangerines up on the scale to get the right weight for the recipe.  Just look at how these beautiful tangerines brighten up the room!:

Bright & Sunny

But let's back up a bit and look at the ingredients.  I doubled up the recipe in the above mentioned link, because I want to make some of this as gifts.  Here's what I used:

• 6 pounds of tangerines (about 23 of them)
• 2 huge Meyer lemons that we traded for some fresh milk
• 3 cups water
• 9 cups sugar (I know, I know.  That is a lot of sugar, but as I told my kids, that is what jelly, jam, preserves are: fruit and sugar)

The ingredients

If your olfactory system is in good working order, this part will make you happy and fill your kitchen with great citrus fragrance.  Take a sharp knife and cut the lemons and tangerines into thin slices.  I aimed for 1/4 inch thickness, but it was hard to do on the ends.  As I sliced I removed the seeds.  The seeds were the only item other than the stem end that went into the compost pile as you use the entire fruit for the recipe.  The juice burst from the cut citrus burning my fingers, but smelling so good.

The smell is great!

All of the sliced fruit goes into a big pot along with the water and you bring it to a quick boil.  

Bring it to a quick boil

Once you have a rolling boil, you can let it simmer for 5 minutes and then cover and take it off of the burner.  Allow it to sit in the pot for 12-18 hours.  I assume this gives the fruit flavor to really infuse the contents of the pot.

Quickly Boil and then Wait Patiently

The next morning I added the 9 cups of sugar to the pot and stirred it all up.

Sugar.  Lots of sugar

The contents of the pot are brought to a full boil.  While you are waiting for it to boil remember that "A watched pot never boils," so get another pot of water boiling and sterilize your jars, lids, rings, and gaskets, if you are using Tattler lids.  

Continue stirring constantly until the contents of the pot have almost reached a gelling point. 

Almost ready for the jars

Then ladle the hot mixture into your sterilized jars using a canning funnel.  I tasted a big chunk of lemon/tangerine at this point and it was good - really good.

Filling the jars

The lids, (gaskets) and rings are put on the jars and placed in a water bath canner.  When the water begins to boil, start your timer and allow to process for 15 minutes.

Splish Splash

Here is a spoonful of freshly made Tangerine Marmalade.  The marmalade was looking for a biscuit (or a girl with kaleidoscope eyes!), but alas, there were no biscuits to be found, so I put a slice of bread in the toaster to serve as the delivery mechanism to bring the spoonful of marmalade to my mouth.

Tangerine Marmalade

The taste was great and the jars seemed to have a light source all of its own - brightening up a dark corner of the kitchen while the jars cooled.

Cooling down on the cooling racks

I placed one of the jars on the window sill to contrast against the grey skies.  It was like sunshine in a half pint jar!

Here comes the sun!

Tangerine Marmalade!  We normally just make blackberry and grape jelly, so this was a new twist for us to spread on biscuits, toast, etc.  I also read that that it makes a delicious glaze to put on ribs, chicken, fish, ham, and to put on top of cake and cheesecake.  So many new things to try!