kyrsyan
Has No Life - Lives on TB
A long time ago, I canned oranges. To say I enjoyed them would be simple. They were gone in about a month. But the mess and prep work made it so that I never canned them again. My hands absolutely hated the results from both the sugar and the acid, even with gloves.
I also like to make my own zest. But lately that's been a problem because the rinds are super moist on the fruit that is coming in locally. So instead of getting zest, I get finely shredded rinds that are still on the fruit, and I mess on the grater or microplane.
So when I ran across a blog talking about a product called Pectinex Ultra SP-L. I had to try it. With current diet restrictions, I need fruit with no additional sugar. (And one of the fun discovers was finding that some citrus has added sugar. A friend and I still haven't figured that one out.) But fruit canned without sweetner will taste uck. Osmosis can suck sometimes. I can do light simple syrups made with alternate sweeteners, or use unsweetened orange juice, in place of sugar.
So I got a small bottle of Pectinex Ultra SP-L and yesterday I started the first test. I noted the warnings of other users about different citrus types. I was starting with lemons so I wasn't sure about the results. I needn't have worried. They came out really well done.
Ideas for if you want to use this. For zest, carefully peel the outside of the citrus. I used a regular peeler and focused on just getting the colored part and leaving the white part behind. This all went into one bag.
For the fruit, peel the remaining zest off the outside of the fruit. Then separate the slices. Try to remove any of the loose pieces. Don't worry about removing it all, but it always helps to have less for the solution to deal with. Then put this into a separate bag.
Then add the water with Pectinex Ultra SP-L into each bag and gently squeeze the air out. Next step, put the bags back in the fridge for 15 hours. My bags got 16 hours. Finally, at least for this part, rinse the peels and fruit so that the enzymatic action stops.
The results were great. And much better than anything I would have gotten by hand. This afternoon I'll work on finishing those projects off. And next week, I'll do mandarins.
I also like to make my own zest. But lately that's been a problem because the rinds are super moist on the fruit that is coming in locally. So instead of getting zest, I get finely shredded rinds that are still on the fruit, and I mess on the grater or microplane.
So when I ran across a blog talking about a product called Pectinex Ultra SP-L. I had to try it. With current diet restrictions, I need fruit with no additional sugar. (And one of the fun discovers was finding that some citrus has added sugar. A friend and I still haven't figured that one out.) But fruit canned without sweetner will taste uck. Osmosis can suck sometimes. I can do light simple syrups made with alternate sweeteners, or use unsweetened orange juice, in place of sugar.
So I got a small bottle of Pectinex Ultra SP-L and yesterday I started the first test. I noted the warnings of other users about different citrus types. I was starting with lemons so I wasn't sure about the results. I needn't have worried. They came out really well done.
Ideas for if you want to use this. For zest, carefully peel the outside of the citrus. I used a regular peeler and focused on just getting the colored part and leaving the white part behind. This all went into one bag.
For the fruit, peel the remaining zest off the outside of the fruit. Then separate the slices. Try to remove any of the loose pieces. Don't worry about removing it all, but it always helps to have less for the solution to deal with. Then put this into a separate bag.
Then add the water with Pectinex Ultra SP-L into each bag and gently squeeze the air out. Next step, put the bags back in the fridge for 15 hours. My bags got 16 hours. Finally, at least for this part, rinse the peels and fruit so that the enzymatic action stops.
The results were great. And much better than anything I would have gotten by hand. This afternoon I'll work on finishing those projects off. And next week, I'll do mandarins.