Tigress’ Can Jam: Tangerine Lemon Jelly

Tigress’ Can Jam January Featured Produce: Citrus!

I was so eager to get this show on the road that I had all of my tangerines and lemons juiced before I remembered that I need pictures for this! Fortunately, I had one of each left over:

4 cups of juice, with lots of leftover rinds and seeds for the compost. Don’t worry – those seeds come out later.

This was a very normal jelly recipe (read: easy easy!) Boil, simmer, strain, add pectin, boil.
Add sugar and boil some more:

All the gear, ready to go:

Go! Canning the jelly:

Mmmm… ain’t it purdy?

This jelly turned out really well. I chose to do a jelly rather than a marmalade because this month is busy and I wasn’t sure I could handle the time commitment of a marmalade. I made a beautiful blood orange marmalade last winter that took hours, and I just wasn’t sure I was up for that this month! This would be an excellent recipe choice for someone just getting started into canning, as it’s very straightforward.

The taste of the jelly is very sweet (as jellies usually are), but the lemon gives it a lovely tartness that balances it out nicely. Both fruits shine through, with the sweetness of the tangerine and the tart of the lemon complimenting each other very well. The colour is spectacular – much prettier than it appears in my photos! This jelly would be great with cheese, or on very buttery biscuits. In fact, I have some tea biscuits in my freezer, so I think I know what I’m having for breakfast tomorrow!

Tangerine Lemon Jelly
From The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard (also available from Amazon)
Yield: 5 1/2 cups
Level: Beginner

3 lemons
9-10 tangerines
1 box dry fruit pectin
4 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1. Squeeze lemons and tangerines to give 4 cups (1L) juice. Bring juice to a boil over high heat in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
[If you haven’t already done so, prepare your jars, lids, hot-water bath, and other canning supplies while the juice is simmering. As with all standard jellies, things move pretty quickly from here on out.]

2. Strain juice through a jelly bag. Return strained liquid to saucepan and stir in pectin. Bring to a full boil over high heat, reduce heat and boil gently for 1 minutes, stirring constantly. Add sugar, return to a full boil and boil hard for 1 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

3. Ladle into hot jars and process for 10 minutes according to standard water-bath preserving technique. [Don’t know how to do this step? Check out the Tigress’ great Canning 101 post for a great primer.]