Blueberry Meyer Lemon Marmalade

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Blueberries and Meyer lemons seem like a match made in heaven to me.  I have only made one other marmalade.  Years ago I made a strawberry orange marmalade that was delightful.  Marmalades are preserves made by boiling citrus and thinly sliced pieces of citrus rind.  They are a bit laborious to make because of the need to very finely chop the rind.  After an hour and a half of having my fevered daughter sleeping on my lap (hate the fever, loved the cuddle time), I spent about an hour or so on this task.

This was another recipe from the Canning for a New Generation book by Lianna Krissoff that I am quickly falling in love with.  The jams and jellies recipes don’t use pectin, but rely on natural pectins to gel.  The yields are less without the 6-8 cups of sugar called for in the commercial pectin recipes, but the reduced sugar is great and I have enjoyed learning about methods to “gel” without the pectin powder.  For the marmalade, I carefully separated the membranes and seeds.  I put them in a cloth bag (in this case, my cheese-making bag) and added them during the cooking process.  They contain lots of natural pectin and were the key to making this marmalade spreadable and not drinkable. The recipe went smoothly and set nicely.

The taste test was disappointing, but I am blaming myself here.  I think I did not slice the peel thinly enough. The flavor of astringent lemon peel is too pronounced.  It’s not bad, but not amazing either.  I’m glad I did not make a double batch.  The rest of my fancy Meyer lemons will go into lemon curd. Live and learn.