His method was different from mine. I took all the coloured peel off using a vegetable peeler and made sure I didn't get any of the white pith. The pith, along with the seeds, went into a cheesecloth bag and was suspended into the juice and peel.
The combination of peel, pith and seeds was supposed to provide enough natural pectin to thicken my marmalade. You may remember that I had to add some Cert-o to get it to thicken up.
Dan's recipe didn't divide the orange up in the same way. He squeezed out the juice, removed some of the thicker membrane and chopped the peel, pith and all.
That's a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey. He wasn't drinking it. It was waiting to be part of the recipe — whiskey and candied ginger.
His required quite a lengthy period of boiling. It was different from mine, even at this stage.
As I had, he cooked and cooked, stirred and stirred, tested and tested. He used the small-cold-plate-in-the-freezer method as well but the marmalade still wasn't thickening. We even found a candy thermometer that we hadn't seen for years in the bottom of the "miscellaneous drawer" and he used that to cook to what should have been the right temperature for it to thicken. No luck though.
In the end, he resorted to the same solution I had: hello, Cert-o. He stirred in a bit and presto — a lovely thick preserve. He added the whiskey and the ginger and pretty soon, it was ready for the bottles.
His recipe made a little more than mine and there was a bit left over to use as a tester. It's very delicious. Marmalade, by its very nature and by definition, is tart and bitter but this one is even moreso. The oranges make it tart; the whiskey and the ginger make it sharp and bitter.
It sure can liven up a piece of toast.
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