This is a recipe for a delicious home-canned orange marmalade with the tart aftertones of rhubarb. Great at any time of the day, but particularly nice for afternoon tea.
There’s a bit of work in prepping the oranges correctly, so plan to do this when you can dedicate a relaxed half hour to the prep.
You can make this with sugar, or honey, or you can make it sugar-free.
The recipe
Jar size choices: 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz) OR quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz)
Processing method: Water bath or steam canning
Yield: 4 x quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Headspace: 1 cm (¼ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes
Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
- 4 oranges (medium-size. About 250 g / ½ pound each)
- 750 g rhubarb (about 1 ½ lbs / 8 cups cut into 1 inch pieces)
- 750 ml water (3 cups)
- 4 ½ tablespoons lemon juice (bottled. 75 ml)
- 4 ½ teaspoons Pomona pectin (15 g)
- 3 teaspoons calcium water
- 500 g sugar (white. 2 ½ cups / 17 oz weight. Or alternative of your choice -- see notes.)
Instructions
- Wash the oranges. Using a microplane or similar grater, zest two of the oranges, being careful not to dig down into the white.
- Put the zest in a large pot.
- Peel all the oranges, discard the peel. Take the oranges apart and get rid of all white pith and tough membranes -- they won't get any more interesting on your toast.
- Take the cleaned orange flesh, chop up into small pieces and add them (and any juice on the chopping board) to the large pot.
- Chop up the rhubarb into 2 to 3 cm pieces (1 inch), add to pot.
- Add water to the pot.
- Put pot on a high heat burner, then when it starts to boil, cover, and lower to a simmer for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Remove pot from heat.
- Stir the calcium water into the pot.
- Mix the sugar and pectin together, set aside. (If using a liquid sweetener such as liquid stevia or honey, mix the lemon juice and pectin powder together quickly). If using sugar, add the lemon juice instead now to the pot.
- Stir the pectin mixture into the pot. If using a liquid sweetener, add it now as well to the pot.
- Put pot back on the burner and bring back to a full boil.
- Let boil for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.
- Ladle into quarter-litre (½ US pint / 8 oz) jars.
- Leave 1 cm (¼ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a week of jar time for the flavours to meld.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
For stevia, Better Stevia liquid stevia was the stevia used.
Information about Pomona pectin.
More information about Sugar and Salt-Free Canning in general.
Recipe notes
- If you prefer a thick peel marmalade, then take the peel from two of the oranges, clean it of all white pith, then cut into narrow strips, and cut each strip into pieces 2 to 3 cm (1 inch) long. This manual process is a bit more work, of course — but for thick-cut fans, may be worth it when there is the time.
- If you are using frozen rhubarb, thaw first in the microwave in a jug or bowl. Then add, including juice, to the pot.
- Pomona pectin comes with a small pouch of powdered calcium for you to mix with water to make calcium water.
- The pectin powder will clump if you just mix it straight in; that’s why you mix it with something first.
- Instead of the sugar, you could use the same volume amount of granulated Splenda®, or 250 ml honey (1 cup / 8 oz), or 3 teaspoons of liquid stevia. For stevia, we’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia.
Don’t leave any white pith on the oranges. Next, take the sections apart and remove any tough membranes.
Recipe Source
Source: Duffy, Allison Carroll. Preserving with Pomona’s Pectin. Beverly, MA: Fair Winds Press. 2013. Page 158.
Modifications made:
- None. Slightly redid pectin powder process to accommodate stevia in liquid form.
Nutrition information
Sugar-free version with liquid stevia
Per 2 tablespoons:
- 7 calories, 14 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 to 6 tablespoons, 0 points. 7 to 20 tablespoons, 1 point.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
Nicole Barlow
The flavours are amazing for this recipe but I ended up with quite a bit more marmalade than expected and it didn’t set! I followed all of the directions exactly except for doubling the recipe and using 4 oz jars. I filled twenty 4 oz jars and ended up with about 8 cups of marmalade left over! What did I do wrong? How can I fix it at this point?