Bergamont and Blood Orange Marmalade

Last year at this time I found Bergamont sour oranges. Even though I do not like to drink Earl Gray tea, I do love the smell, so I bought the oranges and made a marmalade with them. It was delicious, but I never wrote down the recipe (back to my old bad habits). I used blood oranges with them and this recipe is my attempt to recreate that success. I added a vanilla bean, but that was the only change I made.


Ingredients:

5 Bergamont oranges
8 blood oranges
7C sugar
1vanilla bean
3/4C water
1/2 pkg pectin

Notes:
Because the marmalade was more peel than pulp, the sugar was not melting into the juice. Fearful that it would caramelize or burn I made the executive decision to add the water and therefore the pectin too, which you may or may not need. Rule of thumb on marmalade is to measure the fruit and use an equal amount of sugar, so adjust your sugar. I would never have used the pectin in a marmalade without having added the water. A note on another recipe stated that I used 5 Bergamont oranges to 2 blood oranges in my first Bergamont and Blood Orange marmalade. Now I'm interested in comparing the two.

Directions:

Peel the fruit and boil the rinds for 60 minutes. Remove pith, seeds and sections from the fruit, and add the pulp and juice together into a large measuring cup. When the peels have finished boiling, scrape the pith from them and slice as thin as possible, placing the sliced peels into the measuring cup also. Place fruit pulp and peels into a nonreactive sauce pan and bring to a boil.

Add an equal amount of sugar to the fruit and stir, bringing to a boil over high heat. I added the water when I could see that the sugar was not melting down in the juice, but saved the pectin until the end of this process. Bring the preserve to a rolling boil, stir until you cannot calm the boiling bubbles and place into sterilized jars for canning. Please see "Canning Made Simple" under the heading Preserves for a detailed description of the canning process.

This recipe makes 3 1/2 pints of marmalade