Here’s a top tip for buying Jam/Marmalade: look at the ingredients at the back and count them. If the number exceeds two, toss it into a skip with the rest of the muck mentioned above and continue your search.
Trouble is orange trees don’t grow very well in this country so the bees only have useless flowers to get the nectar from to make the marmalade, which is in turn useless.
Orange trees grow much better in Spain, hence the bees have much better orange flowers and so make better marmalade.
Hmm.. not sure how bees go about making marmalade? Must take an awful lot of them to chop up those oranges!
If they take nectar from the flowers of orange trees they make marmalade, same as if they take it from the flowers on strawberry or raspberry plants they make jam.
If they take nectar from the flowers of orange trees they make marmalade, same as if they take it from the flowers on strawberry or raspberry plants they make jam.
Thermometer not needed. Just test a blob on a plate, once it forms a skin that wrinkles up as you push the blob with your finger you’re there. 🙂 But I think you already know that….
I can personally vouch for Sir Nigel’s Vintage marmalade from Fortums or make your own and fine tune your efforts to you taste.
I made 7 jars over Christmas and the recipe stated 1.8 kilo’s of sugar. Slightly too sweet for my tastes but my culinary quest continues. It’s the same with Venison stew. Differents ways of getting there and that’s half the fun.
Just use whatever ones are about.Once friends,family get to know they’ll start collecting jars for you,they do have to be encoraged with full ones in return.
PP,I got a confectioners/preserve thermometer for a birthday present that’s accurate was about £20 I believe
I only ended up with a thermometer as was being asked what I wanted for a birthday and always like something new and shiney 🙄 can’t say it makes better marmalade than the previous saucers in the freezer/wrinkle test though.
Bunnyhop,always found it easier to make smaller batches 5-6lb.
Delia has good recipes for different marmalades.The canned seville oranges make ok marmalade but not as good as starting with the fruit.
Also as this is Singletrack try stirring in a teaspoon of whiskey in each jar,does give less of a set though.
I bought a cheap thermometer, something seemed wrong about it, and a batch failed to set. Testing it showed it to read 103 deg in boiling water. Then I bought a decent thermometer.
Oh, and only save the jars with standard screw tops, it saves a lot of swearing.
First batch of Pam “the jam” seville orange marmalade made today. 8 jars for the pantry. Next week will be the orange and ginger then maybe some whisky marmalade which should see us out to the end of the year!
My Mum was the worlds best jam maker. Except….
one day she tried making marmalade in the pressure cooker which she’d never done before, anyway the weight came off the lid & high pressure marmalade went all over the ceiling. It was funny as owt!
