Making Candied Orange Peel

This comes with a story.

dredging (almost done)

My grandmother was not a good cook (there is a family tale involving her cooking a ham, "cloves" and "why does the ham go 'clink' when I carve it?"  Apparently carpet tacks were involved.).  My mother preferred to cook if they were both eating.  She did make certain things well, but dining at her house could be ... interesting.

One thing she did make decently was candied orange peel.  When I decided to try my hand at making it, I went looking for a recipe.

This was the early 1990's everything I found featured corn syrup.  I went looking through the collection of cookbooks. (6' of bookshelves, with odd items in it, like a Junior League cookbook from New Orleans, and Elinor Fettiplace's Reciept Book).

I finally found a usable recipe in a book that dated to WWII, I think my mother was given it as a wedding present, complete with "Wartime Ration Supplement"

Ingredients:

peel from 4 oranges

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

additional sugar (about 4 cups)

(this recipe scales well, so long as you keep in mind the 1 orange, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 water ratio, I made it for 200 for a coronation dayboard many-many years ago)

Cook the peel submerged in water until the peel is soft (I have found it takes about 90 minutes.  Don't forget about it.  The peel smells dreadful if it burns.  The peel will try to float, but if you put a plate or bowl on the top of the peel, it will stay submerged.

from l-r
pith, scraped peel, unscraped peel

Remove the saucepan from the water and pour the water off, and either reserve it or use fresh water as the 1 cup used to make the syrup.

Using a cutting board and a cooking spoon/tablespoon, scrape the pith from the peel and discard it, keeping only the zest/orange portion of the peel.  The pith is bitter, and the cooking makes the peel soft and seems to alleviate the bitterness.

sliced peel

Once all the peel has been scraped, cut it into strips about a 1/4" wide and put it aside.  It will fill a bowl, and drain any excess water.

Make a simple syrup of the water from cooking the peel, or use fresh water if you like.  When the sugar has dissolved and the syrup is hot, add the peel back in.  (even if you've drained the peel, there's a great deal of water trapped in it).

cooked until translucent

Cook the peel, stirring occasionally until the peel has gone translucent  (it will take over an hour).  Remove the peel from the syrup and spread it on a cookie tray on wax paper to dry overnight.  If you want to keep the syrup (it goes nicely in hot tea), filter it to get the last of the peel out of it, and to get rid of any other bits of orange that may have crept in.

drying over night

In the morning, dredge the peel through the additional sugar and put it in a sealed container.  It keeps decently in the refrigerator.