Recipe: Candied Grapefruit Rind

Recipe

Candied Grapefruit Rind

Recipe By: "Papa Moe's Pommerensin"

(thick) rind of 4 graprfruit
1 T. salt

Syrup:

3 C. sugar
1/4 t. lemon juice
1/2 C. cold water

Place rind in cold water with the salt, boil for a few minutes. Pour off water and prick the skin with a fork to see if it is soft. Add cold water to cover rind and then squeeze out water from rind and dry in paper towel. Place ingredients for syrup in a saucepan and boil until it is clear.

Cut rind in thin strips and boil in syrup until all the syrup is dissolved. Place on a plate to dry overnight. The next day put coarse sugar in a paper bag, add a few strips at a time and shake the bag until the rinds are coated with sugar. These are beautiful to look at, the orangey-golden color of Australian crystalized ginger—not the pale Chinese ginger you'd expect from the original color of the fruit. They're pretty bitter, still-- not unpalatable, as with raw, but repeated blanching in cold water will remove the bitter oil that causes this.

Candied Orange Slices

Recipe by: Amycakes

I'm trying this two ways.

Lazy man's: Slice the oranges (1/8") pack them in granulated sugar for a few days. Forget about them. This works with lemon slices you want to use for a garnish. I do it when I have lemon meringue pie in production. They don't get crusty in the sugar which turns to syrup, but the osmotic exchange occurs and they taste and look lovely. I never tried drying them after.

The old way: Bring three cups of sugar and a one cup of water to a boil. Skim any scum that arises from impurities in the water. (These might be minerals from the tap water or even from the pot, if it's aluminum.) A squeeze of lemon juice or a pinch of cream of tartar will prevent recrystalization, but becomes unnecessary once the fruit is added. When all the sugar is dissolved (it boils clear) take it off the fire and let it cool down. It can still be warm, but not hot, when you add your sliced fruit. Since this syrup is hotter than plain boiled water, expect the cooling process to take a while.

You can speed it up by setting the pot in ice water. Add the sliced fruit. It will float. I put it in a plastic container with a lid and fill it to the top. The lid keeps the fruit submerged. It also keeps out dust.

If you put the fruit in the syrup while it's still hot, it will burst the cell walls and the juice will run out. This is no good, because the cells won't hold the syrup, either. What you want is an exchange of fluids that is gentle, so the cells aren't ruptured. It takes about two days. If pushing the slices down into the syrup they tend to stay in suspension and don't come bobbing up again, the densities are about equal.

Now drain the fruit and reserve the syrup. Bring to the boil another cup of water and a cup of sugar. Add the reserved syrup and boil it until there are just big bubbles, no tiny ones. This will mean that you have boiled out all the water, and are left with melted sugar. Cool the syrup again and add the fruit. When the fruit again tends to stay in suspension, it's ready to be air dried on a cake rack. It will take awhile, say overnight. Put the rack on a cookie sheet to catch the drips. Don't try this in humid weather. The finished product looks like stained glass and is only slightly more flexible, with the original color preserved. Use them as garnishes or as a candy. It's easy, but takes patience.