Delicious candied orange peels, perfect for panettone, brioche and all other pastry.
This recipe is not fast, but at the same time one of the easiest ones. I've also tried the recipe when orange peels are cooked during 6 days, and they are so delicious! But 6 days!)) We don't always have so much time, so here is the recipe that is fast, but tastes also great.
Ingredients:
- 10 oranges
- 1 kg of water
- 450 g of sugar
We cut oranges in 4 pieces, peel them off, you can cook the peels and store them in a jar as "leaves" or you can cut them in 1x1cm pieces and cook like this. Sometimes I do it step by step, collect peels from 2-3 oranges that we eat and store in the freezer, then when I've collected quite a lot of them, I cook them all together.
So we take all peels, cover them with water in a big pan, add 2 pinches of salt, wait until they boil and cook them for 5 min. Then we pour all water out, leave the peels to cool down in a colander under a cold running water for a minute. And then we repeat the same step one more time but salt is no longer needed: we cover the peels with water in a big pan, wait until they boil and poor all water out. Cool the peels down under cold running water for a minute in the colander.
Then we should repeat the same step 3 more times, in total 5 times: 1 with salt, 4 without salt. We need to do it to let the peels become not bitter, if you want and have time, you can boil and change water even 6-7 times, the taste of cooked peels will be only better.
After we boil and cool the peels down for the last time, we take our big pan, add 1kg of water and 450 g of sugar, start heating them, wait until all sugar dissolves and add all peels to the syrup. Wait until they start boiling, then continue cooking the peels on a low heat for 30-40 min, the peels should become more transparent, the syrup will evaporate to some extend and will become a little bit more thicker, but not too much.
If you see that there is not enough water for your peels (they should be all covered with syrup) add some more water and sugar proportionally: for 1 kg of water we take 450g of sugar. Optionally you can also add 150-200g of juice from your oranges to the recipe water, if you want to enhance the taste.
There is also another proportion for the syrup, I've also tried it, with it you will get more syrup for your candied peels that you can also use for example to cover the top of your baked pastry. You can try both proportions and find what you like most.
We take peels :water :sugar with the proportion 1:1: 2
For example you take 500g of peels : 500g of water : 1000g of sugar.
Boil the peels with the syrup for 30-40 min on a low heat until they become more transparent.
After the peels are cooked, let them cool down for an hour in the syrup, then put them together with the syrup in a clean dry jar, let them totally cool down there. The jar with candied peels should be stored only in the fridge.
Hope that you will enjoy it!
