In these strange times when Coronavirus has necessitated lockdown, it’s a great time for trying something new and rediscovering previous joys. So I’m really enjoying having more time for baking and making new recipes. It’s also a time when sometimes I need to be a bit creative because, not being able to just pop out to the shops means supplies can be a bit intermittent. With this in mind I made sure I stocked up on carrots, because we love carrots, they are a regular staple. But then I ordered a salad box and it came with carrots and suddenly I found we had way too many carrots for everyday eating.
I made a nice carrot soup, I made carrot cake – of course, wouldn’t you – but then I still had carrots left, so I hit upon making carrot marmalade.
This is a sweet marmalade for having on toast or scones, rather than a savoury marmalade.
Method for making Carrot Marmalade
Ingredients:
625g carrots
2 oranges
2 lemons
375ml water
375g granulated sugar
Make sure you have a few sterilised jars ready. Mine made 2 and a half jars of marmalade.
Peel the carrots, then grate 2/3rds of them and chop the rest into small matchsticks. I have a food processor with a grater and julienne disc, which was perfect for this. You could just grate all the carrots, but I wanted to keep some texture in the marmalade rather than a smooth mush. The julienne disc looks like this:
Put the carrots in a large saucepan. Then take the peel off the oranges and lemons. (I used a peeler to get just the peel without the pith), then chop into slices. Juice the orange and lemons and add the peel and juice to the pan. Add the water and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the sugar to the saucepan and keep stirring and boiling until it reaches setting point, 105C. This took about 45 minutes to an hour.
Pour the marmalade into the sterilised jars, using a jam funnel if you have one. Then put the lids on.
Would I make this again?
Yes, I was surprised how nice this is! I wasn’t sure how much flavour it would have, but the oranges and lemons do really add to it, whilst the carrot flavour is still strong. If I had an over-abundance of carrots, I would definitely make this again.