You can order them online, or when in season (in Winter), find them at a farmer’s market in areas that grow them. Here in California, once in a while you’ll find one in a neighbor’s yard. Citrus trees were often grafted onto Seville orange rootstock, and sometimes in a hard freeze, the bitter orange rootstock takes over the tree.
Where to Find Seville Oranges
When I first started making seville orange marmalade, it was with the oranges from a neighbor’s tree that had done just that. The rootstock took over the tree and my neighbor had a gorgeous orange tree with oranges that no body in her family wanted to eat! So, she happily gave me some whenever I wanted to make a batch of marmalade. These days I buy the oranges from our local farmer’s market in Sacramento. They’re a bit bigger than the oranges from my neighbor’s old tree, but they are still packed with seeds and juice. Most of the recipes for Seville orange marmalade I’ve found online have a much higher water and sugar ratio to fruit than I am presenting here.
A Marmalade That’s All About the Citrus
This recipe produces a rather intense marmalade, which is not overly sweet. You can add more sugar to it if you would like. I find most commercial marmalades rather cloying, so when I’m making my own, I dial back on the sugar. The great thing about making citrus marmalades is that there is plenty of pectin in the peels, membranes and seeds of citrus, so you don’t need to add commercial pectin to the jam. You do need to extract the pectin from the seeds and some of the membranes of the oranges, which I show how to do here using a muslin pectin bag. Marmalade making is a skill that improves with practice! So, if this is your first time making marmalade, think of it as an experiment. It will get easier and you will get more comfortable making marmalade with experience.
Cheesecloth or muslin bag Candy thermometer
For canning
5 to 6 (8-ounce) canning jars 5 to 6 new canning lids and rings
Use a sharp chef’s knife to thinly julienne the peel. Once you julienne all of the oranges put the cut peels and the juice in a large measuring cup (an 8-cup Pyrex works great). Add the cut Meyer lemon to the measuring cup with the oranges. Add the Meyer lemon seeds to the Seville orange seeds and membranes. You should have 5 to 6 cups combined, of citrus peels and juices. Add 6 cups of water. (At this point you can soak overnight if you want. It will help the peels cook faster.) As the mixture cooks, the pectin from the seeds and membranes will be extracted into the mixture. Depending on your particular fruit, it may take more time, and more water, to get to the point where the peels are soft. Once you add sugar to the mixture in the next step, the peels will firm up with the sugar, so it’s very important that the peels in this first stage of cooking are completely soft. Test the orange peels as you go. Take a bite, if the peel is at all firm to the bite, it needs more cooking. If the water has boiled down and the mixture starts to stick to the bottom of the pot, add more water, 1 cup at a time. When the peels are soft, remove from heat. Note that the jelly mixture will reduce further, intensifying both the flavor and the sweetness of the jelly. I typically use 4 cups of sugar for every 4 cups of fruit mixture, which produces a rather tart marmalade. Feel free to use more! “Milk” the pectin until you have released about a tablespoon of pectin. The pectin has the consistency of sour cream. Add it to the orange mixture. The marmalade may take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes or so to set. After about 10 minutes, start checking it frequently. You can tell if the mixture has reached its set point by putting a small amount of the jelly liquid on a chilled plate, and looking for signs of it wrinkling when you push it with your finger tip. While thermometers aren’t always accurate, the wrinkle test works. If the jelly wrinkles on a cold plate, it’s ready. Put several small plates into the freezer to chill. As the marmalade temperature reaches 218°F, start testing it by placing a small amount of the hot jelly on a chilled plate. If the jelly spreads out and thins immediately, it isn’t ready. If it holds its shape a bit, that’s a good sign. Let it cool on the plate for a few seconds. Push up against it with your finger tip. If the jelly sample wrinkles at all, it is time to take the jelly off the heat. When you use a candy thermometer to test the temperature of your mixture, make sure the probe is NOT touching the bottom of the pan. Make sure the indentation on the probe (with modern candy thermometers this is about an inch and a half from the bottom of the probe) is actually surrounded by the mixture. You may have to tilt the pan to one side, to cover the probe sufficiently to get a good reading. Overcooking a marmalade will result in a caramelized flavor or tough orange peels in your marmalade. Or you can run the jars through your dishwasher, if it has a sanitize setting. Wash the lids in hot, soapy water and dry them. Carefully pour or ladle the marmalade into the jars, one at a time, leaving 1/4 inch head space at the top of the jars for a vacuum seal. Sometimes the marmalade orange peels float to the top of the jar, so to help keep that from happening, turn the jars upside down for half an hour at a time. Keep turning every 30 minutes or so until the marmalade seems stable and the peels are well distributed through the marmalade. If any of your jars did not seal, refrigerate them and use the marmalade in a few months.
