I bought some lovely yellow grapefruit a couple of weeks ago but was too busy to makeup a brew and now they're too ripe. Picked some more much firmer ones today but the skin surface is pretty grotty - my question is can I use the skins from the older riper ones with the flesh of the new ones - the same total weight though. Your opinions please...
elliehen,
Jul 31, 10:59am
I'm sure you can.I had a frugal friend who used to make marmalade from the skins of her breakfast fruit.
buzzy110,
Aug 1, 5:46am
How did you get on wron. I'm not sure that people understand this, but the pith in the semi-ripe grapefruit has a lot of pectin, which is why the skin and pith are all used when making marmalade - it helps it set.
My suggestions, if you didn't want to have the skin from the less ripe grapefruit in your marmalade are:
1. Make sure you add pectin to the mix or 2. Put the skin and pith from the preferred grapefruit into a muslin cloth and cook it with the marmalade. Remove and discard before bottling. or 3. Maybe add some lemons to the mix
wron,
Aug 1, 10:10am
Thanks for the replies ellie and buzzy. I'd already sliced (by hand, not keen on processed marmalade - no processors back when my mum used to make it) 3 lbs of grapefruit - luckily my digital scales convert - and added 12 breakfast cups of water - I did a seach here and found they're from 250 - 300mls. Anyway I used the nice skins and the insides of the green firmer fruit, but since reading your post ellie I've sliced up more of the grotty but unripe skin and popped it in a muslim bag, will remove after the cooking process. This is a 3 day brew and has 10lbs of sugar + 2 lemons!!!! Cheers.
wron,
Aug 3, 10:26am
Bottled tonight, really good set. Thanks again for your help.
wron,
Aug 12, 12:31pm
Bumping for rotamad
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