What to do with sour oranges?
#1
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What to do with sour oranges?
There is an abandoned citrus grove behind my house. I picked some fruit and brought it home. I think the trees have reverted to their rootstock and are producing sour, very seedy fruit. I juiced four and froze it while exploring recipes. So far I have marinade for chicken or pork and salad dressing (substitute for vinegar). Any other thoughts? There are navel type oranges and a small orange with loose skin like a clementine.
#5
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#6
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#8
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Make a kind of "Orange-cello"
Substituting oranges for lemons:
Wash the oranges well.
Zest the peel off around 10 oranges with a zester. Don't grate. Try to avoid the white pith.
Put the zest in a large jar, cover with a liter of good vodka. Put the lid on loosely and let it sit in a cool dark place for a week.
After a week, combine 3 cups of white sugar with 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Do not stir. Boil for 15 minutes, then cool mixture to room temp.
Stir the vodka mixture into the syrup. Strain into glass bottles and seal the bottles with a cork.
Let the mixture age 2 weeks at room temp.
Then put the bottles in the freezer until icy cold before serving.
Store in the freezer.
Substituting oranges for lemons:
Wash the oranges well.
Zest the peel off around 10 oranges with a zester. Don't grate. Try to avoid the white pith.
Put the zest in a large jar, cover with a liter of good vodka. Put the lid on loosely and let it sit in a cool dark place for a week.
After a week, combine 3 cups of white sugar with 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Do not stir. Boil for 15 minutes, then cool mixture to room temp.
Stir the vodka mixture into the syrup. Strain into glass bottles and seal the bottles with a cork.
Let the mixture age 2 weeks at room temp.
Then put the bottles in the freezer until icy cold before serving.
Store in the freezer.
#9
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: London
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Orange ponzu with that orange juice instead of lemon juice. Perfect for the summer (we just bought a litre bottle of Kikkoman ponzu for lock down cooking as we use so much of the stuff in the summer months)
This is a recipe by Harumi Kurihara that can be easily adapted
100ml mirin (or mirim if you get a Korean version - totally interchangeable)
100ml soy sauce
60ml lemon juice (your orange juice should be perfect)
5cm piece konbu seaweed (or reduce the amount of soy sauce by 20% or so and substitute that amount with concentrated dashi stock - if you don’t have that, just leave it out, or add thinly sliced dried shiitake or a drop of anchovy sauce to get a little more umami in there)
To make the ponzu soy sauce: In a small saucepan, bring the mirin to the boil, then reduce the heat and cook for a further 2-3 minutes over a low heat to burn off the alcohol. Remove from the heat and add the soy sauce, lemon juice and konbu and leave to cool.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...0cool.&f=false
Finely sliced fresh cabbage drizzled with ponzu is one of my favourite side dishes, but it’s extremely versatile.
This is a recipe by Harumi Kurihara that can be easily adapted
100ml mirin (or mirim if you get a Korean version - totally interchangeable)
100ml soy sauce
60ml lemon juice (your orange juice should be perfect)
5cm piece konbu seaweed (or reduce the amount of soy sauce by 20% or so and substitute that amount with concentrated dashi stock - if you don’t have that, just leave it out, or add thinly sliced dried shiitake or a drop of anchovy sauce to get a little more umami in there)
To make the ponzu soy sauce: In a small saucepan, bring the mirin to the boil, then reduce the heat and cook for a further 2-3 minutes over a low heat to burn off the alcohol. Remove from the heat and add the soy sauce, lemon juice and konbu and leave to cool.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...0cool.&f=false
Finely sliced fresh cabbage drizzled with ponzu is one of my favourite side dishes, but it’s extremely versatile.
#11
Join Date: May 2015
Location: South Florida
Programs: DL Skymiles KE Skypass
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How many different trees did you try to get oranges from? If it is an abandoned grove, you may want to try a few trees more to the center. When I had Valencia Oranges prior to the Citrus Canker destruction by the State, there were sweet and sour oranges coming off my tree. I believed it was because of cross pollination as I had a Key Lime as well as a Ruby Red Grapefruit tree within 100 feet of the Valencia Orange.
#12
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#13
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How many different trees did you try to get oranges from? If it is an abandoned grove, you may want to try a few trees more to the center. When I had Valencia Oranges prior to the Citrus Canker destruction by the State, there were sweet and sour oranges coming off my tree. I believed it was because of cross pollination as I had a Key Lime as well as a Ruby Red Grapefruit tree within 100 feet of the Valencia Orange.
I can get a little deeper and remove fruit from more trees to see what I come up with. Four oranges yielded enough juice for me to make a mojo marinade and I have some pork shoulder in the fridge to try it on. I’ll marinate it overnight and toss it in the crockpot tomorrow. No big loss if it doesn’t work out.
#14
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: Cape Cod
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Yikes, that's a tough one. As others have suggested and you noted, a mojo benefits greatly from a real sour orange note. A lot of Americanized Mexican/Cuban/Caribbean recipes use lemons and oranges because the original ingredient was sour orange. Could be a lot of uses there. You can always add a bit of sugar to offset it as well. Jerk chicken or really anything that uses a lemon or lime could easily be subbed.
I would sub it in for lemon with roasted/baked/grilled fish recipes as well.
I would sub it in for lemon with roasted/baked/grilled fish recipes as well.
#15
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Yikes, that's a tough one. As others have suggested and you noted, a mojo benefits greatly from a real sour orange note. A lot of Americanized Mexican/Cuban/Caribbean recipes use lemons and oranges because the original ingredient was sour orange. Could be a lot of uses there. You can always add a bit of sugar to offset it as well. Jerk chicken or really anything that uses a lemon or lime could easily be subbed.
I would sub it in for lemon with roasted/baked/grilled fish recipes as well.
I would sub it in for lemon with roasted/baked/grilled fish recipes as well.