Blood Lime Marmalade

I'm on another "lime rampage". However, these are not the regular green limes that I absolutely love to cook and experiment with in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago I was minding my own business, doing some grocery shopping.

In my midst I saw a haul of new fruits labelled "organic blood limes".

I'm not one to turn away from such things. Especially if it involves some kind of citrus!  

I'd love to paint a picture and tell you I was at some local farmers market.  And that it was a sunny winters day. And that a lovely farmer explained what these organic blood limes were.

But alas no.

I was in the middle of a very busy Sydney shopping centre on a Thursday night.  

On a whim, I picked up my shiny plastic box and off I went to pay.

A little late night googling and some conflicting internet research later, I found some information about these precious little fruits.

They are hybrid citrus fruit developed by the Australian CSIRO.

It's a cross between an Australian finger lime and the Ellendale mandarin (to further confuse things-this mandarin is also a hybrid fruit-a cross between an orange and a mandarin!).

There's a whole of cross breeding going on here!  Phew!  

They look like a large unripened, dark olive.  

And, you're probably curious about the taste. Blood limes are quite acidic and have a "crisp and clean" taste.  

And they smell very mandarin-ey (ok that's not really a word).

My next concern was cooking with them.

I found a recipe for a salsa of sorts but that will have to wait for another blog post. I decided to do what I know best and that was to make a marmalade.

I had visions of making a chunky marmalade-like the ones you make with cumquats. But the skins are not edible on these fruit. It didn't matter in the end.

The marmalade was a success.

It was quite strong in the bitter department but in actually didn't mind that.

Even though it didn't yield much I still managed to enjoy it on some morning toast for breakfast.  

Be wary that I took a different approach in preparing the blood lime marmalade.  

I sliced them in half and boiled them with the sugar syrup and then proceeded to mash them up using a potato masher.  This squeezed all the juicy citrus goodness out, leaving the tough leathery skins behind.  

A little unconventional but a time saver.

📋 Recipe

Blood Lime Marmalade Recipe

Author: Peter G

A recipe for marmalade using organic blood limes

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Total Time 50 minutes mins

Cuisine Australian

Servings 10 serves

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• ▢ 250 grams blood limes, organic
• ▢ 1 cup sugar
• ▢ 1 cup water
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Instructions

 

• Rinse the blood limes under cold running water, slice in half and set aside.
• Place the sugar, water and vanilla extract in a pot and cook over a medium heat until the sugar has fully disolved. Add the blood limes into the syrup, turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil.
• Once you have reached the boiling stage turn your heat down to a simmer and proceed to cook the mixture for approx 40-45 mins. Remove from the heat and using a potato masher squash the limes until all the flesh has been extracted.
• Remove the pips and skins and store the marmalade in a sterilised jar.
• If you don't like any texture in your marmalade you can pass it through a fine sieve before storing it in jars.

Nutrition

Serving: 1 serve | Calories: 92 kcal | Carbohydrates: 23 g | Protein: 1 g | Fat: 1 g | Saturated Fat: 1 g

This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.

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