Making Grapefruit Marmalade (Tigress' Can Jam, January Edition) #tigresscanjam

I mentioned on January 1 that I was involved in a year-long challenge to preserve a batch of fruit or vegetables every month as part of Tigress' Can Jam (see the link in the right nav bar). As my shelf of jars was starting to look a little skimpy, and as I have just finished my last spoonful of the best batch of raspberry jam from 2009, the time seemed right to dive into the January challenge: citrus.

Well, normally I'd make Seville orange marmalade at this time of year, but every Christmas my New York uncle ships up a gorgeous box of Florida oranges and grapefruit, so I thought I'd go for grapefruit marmalade instead. Turns out there's no such thing as grapefruit marmalade, really. Pretty much all the recipes I've found call for lemons too, possibly to raise the acid level and certainly to lift the flavour of the grapefruit, which can be rather dull and bitter. (I had pretty much reached this conclusion thinking about it before I even tried to look for recipes, actually.)

I decided to go for an online recipe for grapefruit-and-lemon marmalade by that queen of Canadian cookery Elizabeth Baird. It turned out really well, and it's a lovely colour. I do have a few reflections for anyone who wants to try it, though.

First of all, it's really what I would call a double batch. I try these days not to do more than about six pounds at a time (not counting tomato sauce). This usually works out to three pounds of fruit and three pounds of sugar. Baird's recipe is just about double that, which means the jars will only barely fit into a larger canner (she says it makes about 13 cups; I got about 14).

She does recommend gelling half of it at a time, but I simply used two pots on two burners. I certainly woudn't try to do it all in one normal pot, because it would have to cook a very long time before it gelled. Why such a big batch, one might ask? Well it only takes three grapefruit (which equals about three pounds). Who would want a recipe that calls for one-and-a-half grapefruit?

This recipe would probably be great with some ginger in it too.

Baird calls the job of cutting up the peel "laborious", and I totally cheated by batting my eyelashes at my pro chef sweetie, Jonathan, who kindly proceeded to julienne the lot at record speed. He did tell me the secret was to use a big knife (not the small one you see in the picture at the top of this post), and rock it back and forth, using the knuckles as a backstop. He also sharpened the knife about four times while he was doing it; he said the citrus skin dulls the blade rather fast. (If I have a chance, I'll edit a little video of his citrus peel knife technique and post it up here.)