Another winter weekend, another bout of citrus preserving. First, citrus peels rubbed in sugar to extract oils and make an oleo saccharum, my favorite way to get flavor out of citrus. I tried both bergamot from Monterey Market and a mystery pomelo/citron hybrid(?) citrus from someone in our neighborhood. I was lazy about my usual careful cutting out of all pith inside the rind of the pomelo/citron since it didn’t taste especially bitter. ...
Another winter, another bounty of local California citrus to preserve. I’ve made some marmalade, but shrubs (juice/oils from fruit+vinegar+sugar, shelf-stable) are my preferred form. Makrut lime, yuzu-chipotle-anise, and bergamot shrubs, all made with mostly rice vinegar to leave the citrus as the focus: It was also a good excuse to strain, filter, and rebottle other shrubs from the past year with sediment that had settled out.
A few photos from an all-day preservation binge earlier this summer on a large quantity of Bing, Brooks, Rainier, and Tulare cherries: I’m deeply skeptical of all single-purpose kitchen utensils, but I will say the 6-cherry pitter was effective: Macerating some of them in sugar in preparation for shrubs. A few weeks later, the final bottled and labeled shrubs: Rainier cherries with fennel 5 cups pitted and chopped cherries macerated in 2 cups sugar with half a bulb of fennel for 24 hours, which drew juice out of the cherries, producing about 2 1/3 cups of juice, then strained and rinsed with 1 1/2 cups of champagne vinegar and 1/2 cup of cider vinegar and bottled (a roughly 2:1:1 chopped fruit to sugar to vinegar ratio) A mix of Tulare (less flavorful) and Bing (delicious!) cherries, macerated on sugar and rinsed and bottled with cider vinegar, in three different batches: Cherries with bay leaf and peppercorn (very subtle bay leaf, just tasted like cherries) Cherries with vanilla beans and pink peppercorns Cherries with fresh ginger ...
Coming across unusual, briefly-in-season, quick-spoiling fruit at Monterey Market yet again inspires cold-infused shrubs to extend the experience. Fresh Makrut limes, unlike any other citrus in fragrance: Oleo saccharum yields the most intense flavors (shown here, Yuzu, an east asian citrus): It’s a pain to juice a yuzu: And a week later I strained and bottled them (I didn’t have time for real labels):
Shrubs (drinking vinegars) are one of my favorite ways to preserve fruit – it goes a long way, it’s shelf stable even at room temperature, and it works as an addition to sparkling water, in salad dressing, or in a cocktail. Between holiday gifts and internal consumption (especially since I bought a Sodastream), the citrus shrubs from April and December were mostly gone. Fortunately, a trip to Swanton Berry Farm (pick-your-own) resulted in a box of small, flavorful, moderately-overripe-and-turning-to-paste-under-their-own-weight strawberries. ...
After last year’s enjoyable experience making shrubs (a shelf-stable way to preserve fruit with vinegar and sugar, for mixing into soda water, cocktails, salad dressings, and so on), I’ve spent a few more weekends trying new citrus, new vinegars, and different ratios, as well as using oleo saccharums (citrus oils extracted from the peel with sugar: I posted some photos of the process yesterday). Bergamot / Cider Vinegar Shrub ...
This is now my favorite way to extract intense citrus flavors, especially from fragrant citrus (bergamot, other sour oranges, Makrut limes, and so on). I’ve started using this in both shrubs and [citrus]cellos. Basically, you slice the peel off citrus, painstakingly scrape off any white pith so you have thin, translucent strips of peel, then pack them in sugar for about 10 hours, periodically kneading them as the oil diffuses out of the peel and liquefies the sugar. Bergamot through the afternoon, in photos: And knobby Makrut limes getting the same treatment (I spent more time after the first photo removing pith before packing in sugar): ...
A shrub (a.k.a. “drinking vinegar”) is a mixture of fruit, sugar and vinegar. It was popular in Colonial America as it was a way to easily preserve fruit pre-refrigeration, and has enjoyed a resurgence in the past few years as a non-alcoholic apertif or as an element in cocktails. I was first exposed to one a few years ago at the Whiskey Soda Lounge in Portland, OR, and loved the tart/acidic flavor, but didn’t realize it was part of a broader movement. Fast forward to this fall and I got a shrubs and cocktail syrups lesson from Kelly McVicker , at Workshop, and then over the holidays made two more batches. ...