The Kangaroo Valley is a little oasis in New South Wales, a couple of hours drive from where we live in Canberra. Very picturesque, it has a micro-climate which favours all kinds of produce. A friend has a house there and every year at about this time she takes orders for some fabulous organic limes grown by a friend of hers.
As he eats most of the marmalade in our house (I’m a confirmed muesli muncher) my husband Matthew always volunteers to do the cutting up, which is rather a tedious job, especially cutting the peel into thin shred. And to be honest I don’t have a good track record when it comes to fingers and very sharp knives. Using a food processor to speed things up just doesn’t work with this recipe – believe me, I’ve tried!
This recipe came from my sister in law Rachel and it’s fabulous. I use only two thirds of the sugar because we like our lime marmalade to be very tangy. I can’t tell you exactly how much the recipe makes, but it’s a lot. I filled 12 jars of varying sizes,
as you can see from the photo. It will keep in a cupboard for at least a year. In fact we have just one jar left from the batch I made a year ago.
Rachel’s Lime Marmalade
Choose very ripe limes which are just starting to turn yellow as they have more juice.
Wash fruit, remove peel with a vegetable peeler and cut into fine strips. Remove pith from the fruit using a small serrated knife and place in a large saucepan with the pips (if there are any) and about half the water. Chop up the fruit and place in another large pan with the peel and the rest of the water. Simmer both pans gently for an hour or until the peel and pith have softened. Strain the pith and pips. Keep the liquid and throw the pith and pips away.
Place clean jam jars without their lids in the oven and turn to 100°C. In a large wide topped saucepan or a preserving pan place the liquid from the pith, the sugar and fruit. Heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, boil for 2 minutes then pour into the hot jars using a small jug and seal with the lids while hot. As limes contain so much pectin the marmalade starts to gel even before it comes to a boil, so there’s none of that boiling and testing you have to do with other jams, to see if setting point has been reached.
Makes 10-12 jars depending on size.
* Adjust sugar according to your taste.The original recipe uses 3kg of sugar. The first time I made it I used 2.5kg and it worked perfectly. I now make it with only 2kg of sugar and that’s how we like it.