I love Orange Marmalade—the sweet jam accented by the slightly bitter bits of rind is the perfect topping for buttered toast. My brother Brad used to keep me in a good supply of his tart homemade version, but now that he’s traded his orange grove in for a pear orchard, I’ve found myself wanting, and I set out to make my own.
I have a Morro Blood Orange tree in my garden, and I have made blood orange marmalade before. Of course I can’t remember how. So I looked at all sorts of recipes, and gee whiz, what a pain! Some call for boiling halved oranges, then soaking, then chopping. Some call for removing the peel with a peeler, then cutting away all the pith, then slicing the denuded oranges and then finally cooking—but I was looking at roughly 6 pounds of juicy fruit. I finally found one that seemed good: juice the oranges, thinly slice the peels—that I can handle, but then it called for wrapping all the seeds and membranes in 4 layers of cheesecloth and cooking the bundle along with the juice—forget it.