Welcome to Steve's kitchen it's that
time of year the holidays are coming,
where you're going to see more and more
candied peel needed for recipes.
It's quite expensive to buy in the shops
but very very simple and cheap to make
so come on let me show you how. Now you
don't need as much citrus fruit as I
have here, just a couple of oranges, limes
and lemons will be perfectly fine.
Frst of all we want to get our oranges
naked so we have to get the skin off
without losing any of it. I'm going to
show you a little trick on how to do it.
Normally I peel the oranges like this
around the circumference but today I
want to go pole to pole because I want
as big a piece of peel as possible.
Let me show you how to do that, I'm going
to do it with a navel orange you can do it
with the lemons or anything though.What we
want to do is just take a sharp knife
and you want to try and just score the
skin only, so I'm going to go all the way
around.
Next you want a teaspoon but not this
end we want this end and you're going to
take the blunt end of the spoon and just
lay it under the skin.
Now you'll feel there's a gap between
the flesh and the skin and you can just
follow the spoon around, once you get the
hang of it it's quite simple and what
we're going to do is go at roughly
halfway around the orange, so you've gone
from here to about there. Turn the orange
around and do the other side. Now what
that's going to enable us to do is to
peel the whole orange skin off like that.
OK to make this a little easier to
handle I'm just going to cut this now in
half with a sharp knife and then flatten
it out and what we're going to do is
take one cut and just continue along the
peels. We get nice longer even strips of
orange peel.
Now I'm going to carry on and do the
lemons in exactly the same way and you
end up with these beautiful long pieces
of peel like this. Now this is a win-win
situation because you end up with this
beautiful orange that you can then just
pull apart and you can use this to eat
or for fruit salads.
I've gone for a big bowl of orange peel
and lemon peels but you could go for
grapefruit any citrus fruit you like and
I'm making quite a lot because I've got
some other ideas you might want to make
over christmas with this fantastic peel.
Now the first thing we're going to do is
blanch these in boiling water just 4-5
minutes to remove some of the bitterness
and also takes any of the wax off that
might be on the peel. I've got a pot of
boiling water, just going to drop the
peel straight into it.
Both the orange and lemon can go in at
this point let's bring our pot back up
to a boil and we just want to boil these
for three to five minutes .Now those
beautiful citrus peels have been
bubbling away for almost five minutes
now so I'm just going to turn the heat
off. We take these off the stove and I
don't want to keep this water now so I'm
just going to strain it off.
Next up we want to make a sugar solution
and we want equal amounts of sugar to
water and this is just to simmer
the peel in to finish it off. Now I've got
about a liter and a kilo of sugar here
you'll be looking for about a couple of
pints, two pounds. Now I'm just going to
bring this up to a simmer and let the
sugar completely dissolve if you're
doing smaller batches of course you can
reduce the sugar and water right down
but we're doing a great big batch because
the holidays are coming. When you can see
the bottom of the pan like that you've
got a perfect sugar syrup.
I'm going to gently lift that orange
peel and start dropping it into my sugar
water to bring the syrup back up to a
boil and we want to turn the heat right
down for about an hour maybe a little
bit longer and we're going to let it
simmer fairly aggressively but keep an
eye on it we don't want it to boil over
and those orange peesl should become a
little bit translucent. Now it's been
about an hour and you can see the orange
peel has become fairly translucent most of
the water has evaporated
I'm going to turn the heat off now and
while the syrup cools down we'll leave
this orange peel in there for a little
while and it will just continue to cook
through a little bit more. Once the syrup
has cooled down a little bit what I want
to do is gently take these pieces of peel
and we're just going to lay these out to
cool down on a cooling rack and let some
of the sugar drip off. Now there are a
couple of different ways that you can
deal with the peel now, you can let it
dry here on the tray and then roll it
over in sugar. What I like to do is just
warm an oven up and warm I'm looking at
about 80 degrees Celsius 175 farenheit
and I just pop these in for about
an hour or so until the candy peel has
become lovely and firm.
I don't really want it coated in extra
sugar and that's the way I like to use
it when I'm baking. Now if you have an
oven that doesn't go down to those low
temperatures you can just turn it on
until it gets a little bit hot then turn
it off leave a light on and just let the
candied peel dry out. My peel has been
in the oven for an hour and it's just
dehydrated a little bit, just come in and
look how beautiful this is. Just the
tiniest bit sticky
this is supple, beautiful and perfect and as
I say some people roll it in sugar I'm
not going to do that because I want
these for some great recipes
particularly my Italian panettone that
we'll be making just before Christmas so
look out for that video and also these
are great if you just dip them in a
little bit of chocolate and set them and
you can make little gift boxes up they
taste fantastic. Now I should just say a
lot of recipes take the pith off of the
candy peel, don't do it it's so good once
it's been candid, just look at this soft
buttery, its citrusy it's delicious but is
that all you made Steve, well no you saw
how much candied peel that I had look over
here, here is the rest of that beautiful
candid peel on a plate. I've got loads of it
and some I like diced up which is going to
go in that panettone we spoke of.
So for the smallest amount of money and
a little bit of effort you've got this
great big bunch of candied peel that
would cost a fortune in the shops and
you've made it with something you
normally throw away. So if you enjoyed
this video please give it a thumbs up,
love to hear your comments down below
and if you make candied peel and if you
get some limes or some grapefruits to do
with send me some photographs across to
at steve's kitchen or hashtag steve's
kitchen on social media. Be good I'll see
you in the next
video, take care