Most orange marmalade recipes are tedious and time consuming. With this recipe, you can eliminate most of that work with your blender. Make it as a dipping sauce or a spread. It’s superb as an oriental sauce. Make it as a refrigerator jam or a freezer jam.
We served this in the store on crackers. It was an incredible hit!
“Do you sell this?” “Can I have the recipe?”
In front of the serving table, two ladies were brainstorming how to use this.
“Isn’t this perfect for chicken.” Orange marmalade is often used for Chinese orange chicken. I told them that I had used it on a chicken and rice dish a few nights before.
But marmalade recipes are so tedious with all the chopping, peeling, and blending. There must be a better way.
There is, with your kitchen blender.
No more carefully slicing very thin strips of peel with a knife. No more finely chopping the oranges and lemons.
And the secret ingredient to this marmalade is chopped, dried cranberries. It compliments the citrus perfectly. It’s not the same without the dried cranberries.[1]
Make a spread. Make a sauce.
But we also wanted a sauce for main dishes so we made a version with extra water.
Use it now. Save it for later recipes.
This was intended as a refrigerator/freezer jam recipe. We recommend make a large batch. Whatever you’re not going to use right away, put in the freezer as freezer jam. As a refrigerator jam, use it within three weeks or as a freezer jam, and use it within a year.[2]
Ingredients for a spread
| Small batch | Large batch | |
| Chopped dry cranberries | 1/4 cup | 3/4 cup |
| Meyer Lemon | 1 | 3 |
| Mandarin oranges | 3 | 9 |
| Water | 1 cup | 3 cups |
| Granulated Sugar | 1 1/4 cup | 3 3/4 cups |
Directions
- Peel the Mandarin oranges and the Meyer lemons in large pieces.
- Use the edge of a spoon to scrape the bitter white pith from the back of the peel pieces.
- Place the peels in the blender. Pulse the blender until the pieces are about 1/4-inch in length.
- Place the peels and water in a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Remove any seeds or membranes. Chop the lemons and oranges together in the blender.
- Add the sugar and the chopped oranges and lemon to the peel mixture and cook until it boils. Boil rapidly, uncovered for eight minutes. Add the chopped cranberries. Continue boiling for a couple minutes, until it gels.
- Remove it from the heat, let it cool for a few minutes, and then pour the mixture into jars.
Variation for a sauce
To make a sauce instead of a spread, simply add more water. Add another 1/3 cup water to the small batch and one cup water to the large batch.
Serving Suggestions
[1] The idea for this recipe came from Confessions of an Overworked Mom. But we wanted a quicker/easier recipe, a larger recipe, and one that we could morph into a sauce. Cranberries were her idea and an excellent one.
[2] Refrigerator jams can be stored in the refrigerator (usually up to 3 weeks) or frozen for up to a year. (National Center for Home Food Preservation https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_07/storing_jams.html)
