Today I have made yet another batch of Seville Orange Marmalade. I only have capacity in my kitchen to cook 3 pans at a time, with one kilogram of fruit per pan. It is a very slow process, boiling the fruits to soften the skins, allowing to cool then scooping out the flesh and hand cutting the peel into shreds. After that is the long slow boil followed by a shorter rapid rolling boil - which is when it risks boiling over and creating a really big mess if you are not paying attention!
There is frequent testing for setting point once it reaches temperature. For this I always store small plates or saucers in my freezer. Guests have sometimes questioned why I 'hide' crockery in the freezer!
Once it is ready I have to allow it to cool slightly, to prevent all the shreds of peel from floating to the top . I then carefully fill the different sized jars to the appropriate weight. It has to be carefully co-ordinated so that the hot, sterilised jars are ready at just the right time.
The jars then have to be allowed to cool significantly, usually overnight, so that they can be handled and the labels applied. If anyone has cared to count - there are precisely 5 labels per jar on my standard 300g jars. They all need to be printed/ written, dates completed and applied to the jars by hand . I'm sorry that sometimes they go a bit wonky, but they have a magnetic attraction to the jars:)
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