Save your orange peels instead of discarding, to create a tasty treat. I had purchased a bag of oranges a few weeks ago and soon forgotten I had. As time passed, I finally got around to using them. I didn’t use them for their originally planned purpose, but instead made several other tasty things. I juiced the whole bag, composted the pulp, used the juice to flavor my sparkling water and as an ingredient in my last recipe, the orange sponge cake. As you can imagine, there was a lot of left over orange peels from a 10 pound bag of oranges, that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Candied Orange Peels
Ingredients
- 4 Large Navel Orange Peels Quartered and sliced
- 3 Cups Sugar
- 8 Cups Water
- 8 ounces Simi Sweet Chocolate Melted for dipping (optional)
Instructions
Peel and Cut
- Clean the outside of your oranges well before cutting to remove any dirt. Peel the oranges by scoring the outside of the peel from top to bottom, dividing it into fourths. Gently remove the peel from the orange. Once removed, cut each quarter into thirds. You should get twelve slices from each orange.
Boil
- Place your orange peels into a sauce pan and fill the pot with water until the orange peels are fully submerged. Depending on your pot size, you may need more or less than 4 cups of water. Bring the water to boil, cover with a lid and cook until soft.
Drain and Candy
- Drain off the water, gently rinse and then add fresh water to the pot again, until fully submerged. Pour 2 Cups sugar into the pot of water and return the pot to the stove. Bring to a boil, stir occasionally and cook covered until the white part of the peel is translucent. Monitor the pot carefully, if the water level gets too low, the sugar can scorch the pan.
Let cool
- Prepare a parchment lined sheet pan. Sprinkle 1/2 cup sugar across the parchment and place the peels, one by one, onto the parchment. Once you have all the peels laid out, sprinkle with the last 1/2 cup sugar to coat. Let cool, and dry slightly. As they dry, they will become less sticky and easier to hold/eat. You can also melt chocolate and dip the prepared orange peel into the chocolate. This is how I prefer to eat them.