Marmalade is easy to make if you get organised in advance. This is a great recipe which produces a wonderful, bright yellow marmalade that keeps well.

Recipe: Rosemarie White

I love grapefruit season, the beautiful yellow globes cheer up the winter gloom. Marmalade is easy to make if you get organised in advance. This is a great recipe which produces a wonderful, bright yellow marmalade that keeps well – it if has the chance. My friend Anna’s grandmother reluctantly gave me this recipe- she assured me it wouldn’t work in anything but a recently polished copper preserving pan.

Sorry, Granny Hamilton, that information wasn’t right, it works perfectly in a stainless steel pan, but you were right about a jug of Pimms always being a good option to serve at 4pm on a hot summer’s day.

INGREDIENTS

1.5 kg -1.75 kg of slightly greenish grapefruit
2 lemons
4.5 kg sugar
12 cups of water

METHOD

1. Cut up the fruit including the peel and remove the pips. You can use a mandolin but it’s a fiddle flicking out the pips and a really good sharp knife is just as quick).

2. Add the water and stand for 24 hours.

3. Boil the fruit for 20 minutes and stand for another 24 hours.

4. Bring to the boil once again, add sugar (warming the sugar in the oven speeds things up if you can be bothered) and keep at a rolling boil for about 45 minutes. Test to see if the marmalade is setting with a cold saucer. You can add a knob of butter at the end to get rid of any froth, but I suspect that might impair its shelf life.

5. Pour into warm sterilised jars, will keep for about a year.

ANOTHER RECIPE TO TRY

Recipe: Kelly Farrimond’s Poor Man’s Orange (NZ Grapefruit) marmalade

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At home with top New Zealand company director Joan Withers