February is the time of the year to make marmalade as the new season of citrus fruit is in the shops. As well as using the traditional Seville oranges, marmalade can be made with limes, grapefruit or lemons, or any combination of the above.

I was inspired to make this recipe because I still have a bag of limes in the freezer, left over from a cheap box full I got at a car boot sale last spring. You can easily freeze all citrus fruit and use them to make marmalade later in the year if you wish.

This recipe is adapted from the marvelously utilitarian Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables, which although it looks like someone knocked it up on a photocopier is actually a mine of useful recipes and information.

See here for the Lime and Orange Marmalade recipe.

Recipe Costs

£1.92 750 g limes (about 12)
£2 750g seville oranges (about 10)
£2.56 2.75 kg granulated sugar
3 litres water
£6.48 Total

about £1.44 per kg of marmalade (about 60% of the cost of similar at tesco )

The fruit is halved and after squeezing out the juice the pips and membranes removed, I find a sharp edged spoon useful for this. The limes are a lot tougher than the Seville oranges and consequently had quite a bit of membrane left attached.

I put all the juice and insides into a sieve over the preserving pan, so that they are easily separated.

Once drained the membrane, pith and pips are put in a muslin bag and added to the pan, along with the chopped peel.

 Chopping the peel is actually quit a quick job, not half as time consuming as removing the insides. I've gone for a medium shread as I quite like a bit of bite on my toast.

The peel, juice and muslin bag are simmered for several hours (with the lid on) until the peel is soft.

After the muslin bag has done it's job helping to release all of the pectin contained in the membrane, pith and pips it is removed, I clip it to the handle with a clothes peg to allow it to cool before attempting to squeeze all the liquid out.

Sugar is added and mixed until dissolved, I always love the contrast of white sugar against the fruit.

The marmalade is then boiled until it reaches setting point, this took about 20 minutes, although will be different depending on how juicy your fruit was. With marmalade it helps to let it cool down slightly before potting into jars, this ensures the peel is evenly distributed and doesn't all sink to the bottom.
The small bubbles in this jar are probably due to it being a bit cool when poured.

The best thing about marmalade is you can eat it straight away, I'm enjoying the combination of different sized peel, the lime is a bit tougher than the orange which makes for a nice contrast.

Recipe Timings

1 hour preparing fruit
2 hours simmering
20 mins boiling
15 mins potting

Taste Test

I was concerned the taste of the limes would be lost, but they come through well giving this marmalade a fresher taste than if I'd just used Seville oranges.

image source wikimedia commons

1. The latin name for the Lime is Citrus aurantifolia, the name refers to several species and hybrids.

2. Sour limes possess a greater sugar and citric acid content than lemons, while sweet limes lack citric acid content.

3. British sailors used to be issued a daily allowance of citrus fruit to prevent scurvy, this is where the nickname limey comes from.

4. India grows 16% of the worlds lime, with Mexico (14.5%), Argentina (10%), Brazil (8%) and Spain (7%) following behind.

5. Microwaving a lime for 15 seconds before squeezing produces almost twice as much juice.

6. Freshly squeezed lime juice is a key ingredient in the Margarita.

7. Lime Jell-O is the official state food of Utah.

8. The two varieties of limes used most prevalently are the larger Persian and the smaller Key (mainly available in the US).

9. It is thought that limes originally came from Southeast Asia, then were spread to Egypt and Africa in the 900s. Moors introduced limes to Spain in the 1200s, and became used throughout Europe.

10. Columbus took  limes to the Caribbean in 1493 and they were subsequently cultivated in the Florida region by Spanish explorers.

I used up some of my bargain car boot sale limes on making lime chutney, but have been searching for a spicier Indian style lime pickle recipe. The problem I've been coming up with is that most of the recipes involve leaving the pickle in full sunlight for several days, fine if you live on the Indian sub-continent, but a bit more difficult during your typical English summer.

In the end I had to go with one just to try it out, this is an interesting recipe as far a pickling goes in that it doesn't contain vinegar or oil, the preserving is presumably done with a combination of the acidic lime juice, salt and sugar. I'm still looking for a recipe for an oil based lime pickle as I still have a few limes left (now safely stored in the freezer)

See here for the lime pickle recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.32 1kg (about 16) limes (or £2.56 if buying from tesco)
£ 0.04 100g salt
£0.47 500g sugar
£0.26 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds (ground)
£0.12 2 teaspoons cumin seeds (ground)
£0.10 Half a teaspoon cloves (ground)
£0.03 Chilli powder as per taste required
£0.75 75 g of grated ginger root
£0.03 1 teaspoon Fenugreek (methi seeds)
£0.03 1 teaspoon Mustard seeds
£2.15 Total (or £4.39 if buying limes from tesco)
£4.09 per kg of chutney - about the same as the equivalent at  tesco (£8.28 with buying full price limes - nearly twice the cost of equivalent at tesco)

Salting the limes brought out a fair amount of juice.

The remaining juice is then squeezed out.

Seeds ready for grinding in my favorite pestle and morter, I didn't grind these to a powder as I don't mind a bit of texture in the chutney.

All the ingredients are mixed together and boiled for a minute, the limes are still quite hard when packed into the steralised jars, or in this case jar, as it was reasonably large. There was a lot of surplus liquid once the jar had been topped up.

 Amazing that 16 limes can be packed into one jar, this was then left on a sunny window sill for a couple of weeks, hopefully this will replicate the Indian sun. 

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
10 mins simmering
5 mins potting

Taste Test

I left these for around 10 months before opening, and the first thing I noticed was that they were dryer than shop bought pickles. When making these again I will probably not pack the fruit in so tight so as to allow a it more room for some of the surplus liquid.
The texture however is spot on, just firm enough to provide some bite, without being overly chewy. The sour lime flavour comes through very well, more so than the spices. Next time I'll try increasing the quantities of the spices, especially the chilli powder as I prefer my lime pickle to have a little more of a kick.

We're occasional Sunday morning visitors to a local car boot sale, we can't go that often because we end up buying too much stuff.
One of the stalls which is worth visiting sells vast quantities of cheap fruit and veg, there's never much choice and it has to be eaten quickly, but it's a good place to pick up a bargain. This weeks haul was 15 bananas for a pound and a crate of limes for £1.50 (45 - I counted them).

This lime chutney was an obvious choice, although I think we probably eat more of the Indian style lime pickle (oil based) than this vinegar based preserve, this will add an extra dimension to cheese and pickle sandwiches of the future.

The recipe I used was adapted from the one at grouprecipes.com.

See here for the lime chutney recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.12 6 limes (or £0.96 if buying from tesco)
£ 0.01 1 tablespoon salt
£0.09 1 medium onion finely chopped
£0.47 300ml cider vinegar
£0.02 1 tsp ground ginger
£0.14 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
£0.06 2 tsp black mustard seeds
£0.06 2 tsp white mustard seeds
£0.97 Total (or £1.81 if buying limes from tesco)
£1.49 per kg of chutney - 19% the equivilant cost at tesco (£2.78 per kg with buying full price limes - 34% of the cost of equivalent at tesco)
Interesting that it is still cheaper to make you own even if buying limes at full price.

The lime were sliced and salted, then left overnight, during which time they changed colour.

Added mustard seeds using measuring spoons , both for flavour and appearance.

The recipe called for mixed spice, so I used some recently purchased garam marsala which contains coriander, cumin, black pepper, cardamon cinnamon, ginger, bay leaves and cloves. These were crushed up in the heavy morter and pestle and added to the limes, salt and sugar.

I only had to simmer this for around 20 minutes until it was thick enough, the limes were still a bit crunchy but should soften over time in the jars.

The finished chutney smelt very strongly of limes, as it doesn't contain any sugar I shall be interested to see how sour it is in a few months time.

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
20 mins simmering
5 mins potting

When making marmalade last week I froze some unused lemon peel with the thought of using it for something constructive. After some thought, and research, I decided to have a go at candied peel, not something I'd usually even use.

Hopefully having some in the house will be useful when it comes to baking, and for mincemeat at Christmas if it lasts that long. I wanted to have a wider range of peel than just two lemons, so the bag in the freezer grew to contain the following:

Peel of three lemons - 170g (left over from marmalade making)
Peel of 1 grapefruit - 140g (a breakfast treat)
Peel of five oranges - 255g (a regular winter craving)
Peel of 2 limes - 100g (I wanted some green in the mix, so cooked Thai curry)

I pulled all this out the freezer in the morning so it was thawed when I came to prepare it.

There seemed to be several ways of preparing the peel, either repeated boiling and draining, or just prolonged boiling, but all recipes needed the peel to have the membranes scraped off and then be sliced. This took about 20 minutes, I wasn't too fussy about removing all the pith as I'd read it added to the succulency of the finished product, which made sense - the more pith, the more sugar could be soaked up.

Roughly following the recipe from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog, I boiled all the peel 3 times draining in between.

See here for the candied peel recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.00 665g left over citrus peel £1.39 1.5kg sugar
£1.39 Total
£1.63 per kg of Candied Peel (50% of the cost at Tesco)

I choose to use the above recipe as it had a nice adaptable way of measuring the sugar syrup - using cups as a volume measure. It also gave me a chance to use one of these lovely measuring cups from Nigella Lawson.

I had 6 cups of peel, which wasn't too tightly packed, in hindsight I should probally have packed it in a bit more, as I ended up with way too much syrup. Having surplus did mean that I wasn't concerned about the pan catching or drying out. I do also now have a bottle of citrus flavoured sugar syrup, which makes a nice drink with fizzy water. I may be tempted to try a gin fizz this weekend.
In went the peel to the syrup.

After two and a half hours of simmering the peel had turned translucent, so I drained it and left it on racks before dusting with granulated sugar. I'll be letting it dry out in a large bowl for a few days before packing into jars.

Recipe Timings

1 hrs Preparation 0.5 hr Draining and Dusting
0.5 hr Potting
2.5 hrs Cooking
48 hr Drying

Taste Test

It tastes wonderful, initially sweet with a citrus bite afterward, with also a real difference between fruits. The lime could have done with being a bit softer - more boiling next time. Being able to cut the peel to size will be excellent when cooking with it.