Orange Jam Recipe

My navel orange tree, although still relatively small, produced a good crop this year so I decided to make some orange jam. I’ve previously made Whisky Orange Marmalade and Cointreau Orange Marmalade but wanted to try making a jam that had a sweeter orange flavour for a change rather than the tartness of marmalade.

6 oranges
Water ( to make up 1.5 litres with the orange juice)
Sugar (1 cup per cup of orange pulp)

Wash and zest the oranges. I used a potato peeler but you could use a zester if you didn’t want ‘pieces’ in your jam.

Cut the oranges in half and juice them. Put the juice into a measuring jug and top up with water to give you 1.5 litres.

Chop up the remaining orange flesh, avoiding the pith as much as possible. This is a bit fiddly but worth the effort. Some pith won’t hurt but it can be bitter if you get too much.

Put the orange juice, flesh and zest into a large heavy-based saucepan. Cover and leave overnight.

In the morning, bring the orange mixture to the boil and boil for about an hour until the mixture has reduced to a thick pulp.

Measure the pulp and for each cup of pulp add 1 cup of sugar. I had 4 cups.

Put the pulp and sugar into a preserving pan (or back into the saucepan you used earlier) and bring slowly to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Boil until jam setting point is reached – this took about 10 minutes for me but will vary depending on your stove top. Jam setting point is reached when a small amount of jam dropped onto a cold saucer starts to congeal and wrinkles when you push your finger nail through it.

Pour into hot, sterilised jars and seal. Mine made 7 jars.