One of my favorite podcasts to listen to while I walk is Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway's Home Cooking. Not only is it about food (bonus), but I just love hearing how the two of them interact. Hrishi makes terrible pun after terrible pun, and Samin groans and laughs; they balance perfectly actually talking about food with silly side conversations. I admire tremendously Hrishi's interviewing skills (having listened to seven seasons of him on The West Wing Weekly Podcast), and Samin's food chops are formidable, yet she seems so approachable and down to earth. What a great, genuine laugh she has! On the last episode - episode 14 of a 4-part series - Samin mentioned a jam auction. She makes jam and usually gives it away, but this year, she decided to auction it. Sadly, I had already missed the auction, but I found on her blog a post about grapefruit and lemon marmalade, and I decided I had to try it. She warned that it was not for the faint of heart; it is not a difficult recipe, but it has a lot of steps and takes quite a while. Boy, was she not kidding! It is the definition of patchkerai (alternately described as "fiddly and complicated," "lots of steps," and "difficult to make, i.e., it has a lot of ingredients or steps and it takes a long time"). But it was a fun thing to try, and it yielded eight 8-oz jars instead of the promised six, and the marmalade is super yummy! Totally worthwhile, though I doubt I will attempt it again for quite some time. I decided to document the steps with a bunch of pictures. I will leave the recipe largely unchanged because I thought the descriptions were very good, albeit complicated.
Here's how the marmalade turned out. I canned all but one jar, and that one I popped in the fridge, and once it was chilled, the marmalade had a really nice, jelly-like but not too firm, consistency. You can see bits of the lemon suspended in there.
First, let's talk through the steps, and then I'll post the recipe. You start by peeling off the top layer of the grapefruit peel, then cutting it into 1/8" strips. I'll admit to not even remotely measuring this. I just cut the strips into narrow little pieces. You only need 3/4 cup of grapefruit peel, which I was able to get from 2 or 3 grapefruits (the recipe used 6 total). I decided to peel the rest of the grapefruits and candy the peel, and then I saved the simple syrup as well in case I ever make a cocktail during the break. I gave some of each to my friend Jennifer, who was having a birthday.
Here's the grapefruit peel:
Then you cut off the top and bottom of the grapefruit and cut all the pith off, exposing the flesh of the fruit. Everything in this bowl is trash. (Or compost. Whatever.) But I was nervous about getting something wrong in the recipe, so I didn't want to throw anything out until I was sure exactly what parts were getting used. The pith is super bitter, so you don't want that.
Here are the 5 cups of grapefruit segments removed and in the Dutch oven. I scraped in as much juice as I could because it kept threatening to pour off the cutting board, even though I used one with a chamber that runs around the outer edge. You need to save the membranes, so I put them in their own little bowl. Hold that thought and I'll come back to it in a minute. Basically, you stand the grapefruit on its now-flat end and use a sharp knife to cut down right next to the membrane, removing the fruit segments and leaving the membrane behind. This is called supreming, though I didn't worry a whole lot about making the segments beautiful (which I might if I were trying to make a pretty fruit salad).
The lemon gets cut similarly. These are lemons from my friend Lauren's tree. I'm not sure if they are Meyer lemons, but I'm going to assume they are based on the delicious aroma that lit up my car as I drove home from her house. First you wash them, of course. You cut the top and bottom off the lemons (and discard) and stand the lemons on end so you can see the sections. You're going to supreme the lemons as well, but with the skin on. Then you cut the segments into 1/4" pieces.
OK, now it's time for the membranes. They get placed in a muslin bag called a jam bag, which you tie shut, add to the fruit, and cook in the first part of the marmalade-making process. When that cooking is complete, you let everything cool, and then you wring out the bag into a bowl, which is a super gloppy-sloppy mess... you are trying to extract the natural pectin from the membranes. Pectin is used to thicken jam. If the fruit doesn't have a lot of natural pectin, you can actually buy it at the store, but citrus fruits have plenty. Picture of the pectin in a minute.
OK, so that cutting and prepping part already took at least an hour or more, right? Now the prepped ingredients go into a large and wide pot: grapefruit sections and runoff juice, lemon pieces and runoff juice, grapefruit peel, the juice of a couple more lemons, some water, and the jam bag. See how my jam bag is hanging over the edge of the pot?
Probably not such a good idea, because it totally melted! Oops! Luckily, it came in a pack of two, so I tossed it after extracting the pectin. Lesson learned; I'll put it completely inside next time.
All of that stuff cooks together for 25-30 minutes, until the peels are soft, and then you let it cool. Once the jam bag is cool enough (I actually removed it and set it in this metal bowl to cool faster), you twist and squeeze it until you extract about 1/2 cup of pectin. Be sure to pour the liquid that drains from the bag back into the jam pot so you are measuring the pectin properly. You squeeze and wring, which is not difficult, but it is completely messy and looks kinda gross, and then you pour it into a measuring cup to make sure you have enough. I set the jam bag aside and didn't toss it until I was done making the marmalade in case I needed more pectin. However, there would have been no way to tell. Even when the jam is, by all accounts, "done," it is very runny because it is so hot.
When you have your pectin, you add it, plus a giant amount of sugar, into the pot, and now it's time to make the jam. You cook it, stirring it regularly, until it reaches between 222-225 degrees, which took WAY longer than I expected. Probably at least 40 minutes, and to be honest, I stopped counting. I kept it at a merry boil, probably on medium, and stirred it often, and just let it cook and cook until it started to thicken and reduce.
Here it is, bubbling away. It really did reduce by quite a bit.
When it finally reached 222F, I was tired of cooking, and so I turned off the heat, did the fridge test, decided it was good enough, and called it done. The fridge test means spooning a teaspoonful onto a chilled plate, letting it sit in the fridge for 3 minutes, and then dragging a finger through it. Does the Red Sea stay parted? If so, you're done. If it runs back together, it's not cooked enough yet.
I ladled it into sterilized jars, processed them for 5 minutes in a water bath, and then waited for the satisfying sound of the lids popping. What a fun project, but WAY more involved than I expected! Here's the real recipe, which is from June Taylor, with thanks to Samin for the inspiration. (I realized the recipe on her blog was pulled from NYT, for which she often writes recipes.)
Grapefruit-Meyer Lemon Marmalade
Makes between 6-8 8-ounce jars
5 pounds grapefruit, rinsed
5 Meyer lemons or small regular lemons, rinsed
1/2 cup lemon juice (from 2-3 additional lemons)
2 1/2 pounds sugar
Step 1
Remove the grapefruit skin with a vegetable peeler (you probably only need to do this to 3 of the grapefruits to get the right amount of peel). Cut the peel into 1/8" slivers until you have 3/4 cup. Discard the rest or use to make candied grapefruit peel. Slice off the ends of the grapefruit and the remaining peel and pith. Remove grapefruit segments and juice. Reserve membrane. Stop when you have 5 cups of segments. Discard any pits!
Step 2
Cut the ends off the lemons, deep enough so you can see the flesh. Leaving the peel on, remove the segments of lemon. Reserve the membrane. Cut the segments crosswise into 1/4" pieces. Put the grapefruit and lemon membranes into a jam bag and tie it shut.
Step 3
In a wide and deep pot (I used a Dutch oven), combine the grapefruit segments, grapefruit peel, lemon pieces, and jam bag. Add 1/2 cup lemon juice and 2 1/2 cups water. Simmer until grapefruit peel is tender, 25-30 minutes. Let cool. After 15 or so minutes, remove the jam bag to a bowl so it can cool more quickly.
Step 4
Preheat the oven to 225F. Working over a bowl, squeeze the gloppy liquid from the jam bag. Keep squeezing and wringing it out until you extract 1/3 to 1/2 cup pectin. Add the pectin and the 2 1/2 pounds of sugar to the pot. Place over high heat and boil, stirring now and then, until the marmalade is between 222 and 225F and passes the plate test. (Spoon a little onto a plate and put it in the fridge for 3 minutes. If it thickens like jam - if you can run your finger through it and it doesn't run right back together - it is done.) It's possible I was cooking over too low of a heat, but mine was boiling pretty hard the whole time over medium heat, and it took much, much longer than I realized to get to the right temperature. It was probably at least 40 minutes or more, in which time you could see the amount of liquid reduce, the grapefruit segments break up and liquify, the color darken, and the jam thicken just so slightly.
Step 5
Meanwhile, put 8 sterilized 8-ounce canning jars and lids on a baking sheet and place in the oven. It's important to put hot jam into hot jars; this prevents them from cracking! In addition, it's very easy to sterilize the jars in the oven. Simply wash them well with warm, soapy water, dry them, and place them on the cookie sheet. Bake them at 225F for at least 10 minutes, which will sterilize them. I put mine in when I turned on the oven, and they basically hung out in the oven until the jam is ready. However, I only put the jars in - not the lids or rings. Those, I sterilized in the boiling water that I was going to use to process ("can") the jam.
When the jam is done, remove the jars from the oven. Using a wide-mouthed funnel, ladle the jam into the jars, filling them as high as possible (at least up to the threads of the top). Wipe the rims, place the lids on and the rings, but don't tighten them all the way - just tight enough to stay on well. Place the jars in a bath of boiling water and let process for 5 minutes. Remove from the water (still don't tighten the rings!) and wait to hear the "pop!' that tells you the jar is properly sealed. THEN you can tighten the rings a bit more.
If you don't seal the jars, refrigerate the jam. Or give it to friends to eat, because who can eat 6 or 8 jars of jam fast enough? You can also reprocess any that have not popped within 12-24 hours. Give them time, even if you are feeling impatient!
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