Seville orange marmalade with organic essential oils

At the time of writing this it isn’t Seville orange season. However, a friend of mine has just returned from the South of France where he has a house with a large garden. In his garden there are several bitter orange trees, the fruits of which can easily be substituted for Seville oranges. They happen to be in season at the moment so he picked a few oranges for us to make our own marmalade. We put our own twist on the marmalade by adding drops of different essential oils to the jars as we were spooning the marmalade in.

Here’s a recipe for the marmalade. It makes about 10 medium sized jars of marmalade so add or subtract as necessary.

Equipment
Large saucepan
Muslin bag
V sharp knife
Lemon squeezer/juicer
Approx 10-12 sterilised jam jars
Saucer (chilled in the freezer)

Ingredients
1.5kg/3lbs of bitter or Seville oranges
Juice of 2 lemons (or 1 drop of organic lemon essential oil)
3.5ltrs/6 pints of water
2.75kg/6lbs sugar (organic preferably)

To make
Wash the fruit, cut in half and squeeze out the juice and pips. Collect the pips in the muslin bag and tie securely. Then pour the juice into the saucepan & add the pips.

Slice the peel as thinly as you can and add to the juice & pips. Simmer gently, uncovered, for approx 2 hours until the peel is soft and the liquid reduced by about half.

After about an hour, sterilise your jam jars. There are two ways to do this – sterilising solution or heat. There are lots of sterilising solutions available from good kitchen shops, chemists and department stores – in fact, if you have babies you can use the same sterilising solution that you use to sterilise their bottles.

Using the oven method, thoroughly wash your jars in hot water then turn them upside down on a rack in the oven and let them drip dry at a temperature of 140C/275F/Gas1 for around 30 mins whilst you’re making marmalade.

At this point don’t forget to put your saucer in the freezer if you haven’t already.

Back to the marmalade. After approx 2 hours, fish out the muslin bag and squeeze any juice back into the pan. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved then boil rapidly until setting point is reached – about 15mins-30mins.

To check the setting point, after 15 mins get a teaspoon of marmalade and tip it onto your frozen saucer. Leave for about 30 seconds then nudge the marmalade with the spoon or your fingertip. If it wrinkles setting point has been reached. If it doesn’t, continue boiling the marmalade for another 5 mins and try again.

When setting point has been reached, take off the heat and rest for approx 10-15mins then spoon into your jars. At this point you can add your essential oils.

We left 5 jars as ‘normal’ marmalade then to two jars we added 1 drop of organic lavender essential oil to each; to another two jars we added 1 drop of organic cardamom essential oil to each and to the last jar we added 1 organic drop of clove essential oil.

The organic essential oils not only add a unique flavour to your marmalade but it also means that you’ve got lots of different flavours to enjoy, rather than just one - and with so many jars to eat, it's great to have a variety pack!