Candied Citrus Peel - Recipe/tutorial included

Last year I bought a bunch of oranges from a traveling salesman (don't ask) and had a WHOLE BUNCH of orange peel, and I'd always sort of wanted to try making candied orange peel, but had never had enough peel all in one place. I had a party coming up and knew I could get rid of all the fruit if I peeled it all at once, so I decided to give it a shot. To my astonishment (not being a cooking sort, myself) it turned out well. So, I did it again this year, trying out lime and lemon as well.

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From the top clockwise, we have lime, orange and lemon. I have it on good authority that this candy is tasty, but it seems most people favor the lime.

How it's done:

For the lemons and limes, I bought 3 lb bags of each, sliced them in half crosswise and juiced them. (I froze the juice in ice cube trays for yummy summer drinks.) Then I removed the remaining membrane. For the oranges, of which I had 6 medium fruits, I carefully sliced through the skin only into sixths from stem end to navel and around the middle crosswise, then carefully peeled the fruit and set the peels aside for my evil plans. (I ate the fruit. You can too. Or, whatever.)

You'll want to cook each variety separately if you want them to all taste distinctly of their own flavor. You CAN candy them together if you don't care that the flavors mingle a bit. Dump the peels in a big pot and cover with cold water. Bring this to a boil, immediately remove from heat. drain, cover again in cold water, repeat... You can blanch more or less times depending on how you want your candy to taste, but three times seems about right to me. Fewer leaves more oil in the peel and therefore your candy will be a little more bitter. More than three seems to remove the flavor too much.

Once the fruit has been blanched, slice it into strips. My strips end up being from one to two inches long and about a quarter inch wide, but this is not an exact science. Set them aside and start your syrup. For three pounds of fruit, I used 4 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar, which I mixed in until it saturated the water. I think this was actually overkill, as I was left with a LOT of syrup, but that's OK too, because then you have nice lime, lemon or orange syrup for teas and other uses. The ratio of sugar to water should be about 1:1 in any case, and that can be adjusted to how much ever you need to cover your peel, if you use less than 3 pounds. I think I used two cups of water and two cups of sugar for the oranges, and even that was a tad much.

Once your sugar has mostly dissolved into the water, turn up the heat and bring to a simmer for a little under 10 minutes or until it reaches soft thread stage, around 230 degree or so (if you're lucky enough to have a candy thermometer). Carefully add your fruit peel and cook on a simmer until the peel starts to turn translucent. You can stir the sugar water a little while it's eating, but once it comes to a simmer try not to move it too much or you'll introduce crystalization. I actually don't think this detracts from the resulting candy all that much, but it's best to avoid it for optimum results.

Once your peel starts to become translucent, (a LONG time... 45 minutes to an hour or more depending on how much you are making) remove the pot from the heat and start pulling out the candy pieces. Roll them in sugar and set them aside to cool. You'll have to work fast if you did a big batch. You can even, if you prefer, strain the whole pot in one go and shake the pieces in a large container of sugar, but I find I get best results doing it a little at a time. If the mixture in the pot is cooling too fast, you can keep it on low heat; just enough to keep the syrup from hardening while you work.

Once the rolled candy is cooled off (or before that if you blow on it good and you just can't wait) pack it in an air tight container. The stuff will last a good long while if kept in a sealed container in a cool, dry place.

I know there are a LOT of recipes and/or methods out there, but this one has worked quite well for me. It's easy, but time consuming. I think however you decide to do it, though, it's great stuff and worth a shot.