Citrus Rind Candy

Citrus Rind Candy

I get to go to Arizona every couple of years for Christmas. It's always good to spend a few days with my parents and my sister and her family. Friday night at her house is always Pizza Night and she makes some GREAT artisan pizzas with her own homemade crust. One night after dinner she shared her technique for making orange rind candy from her home grown oranges. It's very simple and I've also used lemon rind which makes a nice variation. Use these as a nice after dinner treat or drop about a one inch piece into a snifter of cognac in the winter time. Crumble them and they make a great addition to home made blueberry muffins.

CITRUS RIND CANDY

Choose 3 or 4 oranges or 5-6 lemons for their bright color and smooth rinds.
Wash them to remove everything that gets on them between Arizona and Iowa!

Using a sharp vegetable peeler, remove just the outside colorful part of the rind, leaving the white pith on the fruit. Make strips as long as you can--they are easier to handle in the process. Cover with water in a small sauce pan, about 2" should do. Bring the water to a boil and keep boiling for 10 minutes. Drain the water. Notice that their is a lot of color from the rind in the water. This is good. Cover with water again and boil for another 10 minutes. Drain again. cover again with about 2 cups of water and a cup of white sugar. Boil again for another 10 minutes. 

BE CAREFUL, this is very hot! Using kitchen tongs, remove the peels from the syrup and lay out on a drying rack. I don't have a drying rack so I cover a pizza pan with about 1/4" of sugar and lay the peels in a single layer to cool and dry. The drying takes 2-3 days or more, depending on the humidity.  These will become very crisp. Be creative in using them! Store in an airtight container after they are completely dried. 

If you want to be real frugal, use the left over syrup for pancakes or cook it to hard crack stage, pour it onto a sheet to cool and break it into hard candy. Juice the fruit and enjoy it, too! I'll try this with limes sometime but I think the lime rind is thinner and would be harder to use. My cholesterol medicine won't allow me to have grapefruit, but I'm sure that would be good, too.