tips for canning citrus?

[PunkinPeep]

I have a wonderful source for lots and lots of tangelos, and a few days ago i canned just a pint of them in medium syrup. Today, we tried them.

The flavor is really wonderful. But the inside of the fruit is pretty much liquefied, and the membrane is a little chewy. This presents a very confusing experience to the mouth and makes them much less enjoyable to eat.

I have read that the mandarin oranges we're used to eating from the store, are processed in lye, which i'm guessing goes a long way toward softening that membrane. Though i don't know how they get the fruit to remain firm.

I'm not going to process anything in lye. And i plan to make quite a bit of marmalade, but i would really like to preserve the fruit itself.

Does anyone have any tips for me to do this well, so they'll be enjoyable to eat later on? Or some other ways to preserve it besides marmalade?

 

[patandchickens]

I dunno, when you eat *fresh* mandarins they are IME pretty identical to the canned ones (only of course dry not wet ) so I would suspect that the major difference is in what the fruit itself is like, mandarins having been bred for a very very 'tender' thin membrane.

If I were going to try to can it and was limited in how much marmalade I wanted to make <g> I would probably just puree or juice the suckers and can 'em that way.

Looking forward to see what others suggest though,

Pat

 

[PunkinPeep]

I dunno, when you eat *fresh* mandarins they are IME pretty identical to the canned ones (only of course dry not wet ) so I would suspect that the major difference is in what the fruit itself is like, mandarins having been bred for a very very 'tender' thin membrane.

If I were going to try to can it and was limited in how much marmalade I wanted to make <g> I would probably just puree or juice the suckers and can 'em that way.

Looking forward to see what others suggest though,

Pat

I was thinking about that, but i don't have a juicer - manual or otherwise. Do you think those thick membranes would mess up the texture if i just pureed them to death in my blender?

 

[patandchickens]

I have used marmalade recipes that call for basically peeling the fruit and seeding it, and then whizzing it in the blender. To me, the result was just like very pulpy OJ. Of course it depends on your tastes. Leaving the membranes on in the blender will make it a little more bitter than if you removed them, which will bother some people with some fruits, but not others.

My suggestion is, go peel and seed *one*, give it a ride in the blender, and then taste the result and see if you want to make more of it

Or, cut the fruit out of the membranes the way they do for buffets and fruit salads, you know what I mean? Peel the fruit, then cut in wedgewise so that you are cutting out the fruit part of each segment and leaving the thin dividing membranes attached to the 'core' of the fruit. There will still be the outer membrane unless you cut that off too (but I find that too wasteful), however the rest of the fruit sections will be membraneless. Save the juice that is produced during all this, and squeeze the 'empty' core-and-membranes assembly afterwards to get the last bits.

Actually come to think of it you should be able to try canning them THAT way, cut out of the membranes, and see if that solves your problem too.

Dunno for sure, as I say I've never done any of this for canning just for fresh eating.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[PunkinPeep]

oooh i may try that. It can't hurt. Maybe i'll do a test jar to see how it comes out.

 

[sufficientforme]

I have no idea, but I refer to this site often for recipes
http://www.pickyourown.org/canningcitrus.php