Everybody loves orange juice, fresh oranges but we always throw away orange peels. But orange peels are good for your health and are edible. The peels contain high amounts of vitamin C, insoluble fiber and essential minerals. Orange peels may not sound tasty but you can make low sugar candied orange peel. This recipe is easy to make but it takes about 2 to 4 days to finish. Is that too long? Don’t worry, I will show you how to shorten the cooking time one day. In this recipe I reduce the amount of sugar as low as I can and still taste good.
One hundred grams of orange peels can offer you 10.6 grams of fiber, 1,5 grams of protein, 25 grams of carbohydrate. Besides, orange peels consist of over 60 flavonoids and 170 different phytonutrients. Researchers found that flavonoids and phytonutrients can retard the growth of cancer cells. And Flavonoid may protect against lung cancer, hesperidin, and help lower cholesterol levels.I do not know how much flavonoid or phytonutrients are left after cooking. But I am sure that candied orange peels taste good and are worth making. What do I need to make candied orange peels?
- 1 kg of organic orange peels (4 kg of organic orange)
- 200 gr of sugar
- 150 ml organic honey
Now let’s start to do it.
Try to use the organic orange peels to make this recipe. As you can reduce the peptise inside the fruit and it better for your health too.
Step 1: Cut oranges into 4 parts and remove orange peels. Cut the peel into small pieces length 1 or 1,5 cm and length 5 – 7 cm. If you have a special knife to make a zigzag or wave your orange peels will look better.
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Step 2: Put all orange peel into cold tap water and boil it. Cook until boiling then reduce the heat and keep it for 5 minutes. You should boil it for 2 or three times to remove the bitterness and soften the orange peel. I do step one and two in the morning and they take me 45-60 minutes to finish.
Step 3: After boiling orange peel for twice or three times you keep it in cold tap water. Put 1-2 tsp. of salt depending on the water you put in and keep it for 8 hours. You can make it at night then in the morning you can start to cook it again. If you don’t like to wait 8 hours you can start to cook it right after you boil and clean the orange peels. I would prefer to keep it for 8 hours and this step finishes in the evening.
Step 4: Remove oranges peel from cold water with salt and clean it with cold water. Put all the oranges peel into a big bowl then put sugar and honey together. Then again keep all ingredients in a cool room for 8 hours. In the evening I do this step and keep it overnight, so that I don’t have to wait.
Note: You can skip steps 3, 4 and 5 if you don’t have time. At step 3 ,you don’t keep the orange peels into water for 8 hours. and then 8 hours of shimming orange peels in sugar and honey. Instead of that after step 2 you start to cook orange peels. First you put water, sugar and honey in a medium saucepan and bring it to the boil over high heat. Bring the syrup to 238 degrees and add the orange peels.
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Step 5: In the morning, I put 300 -400 ml of cold tap water into orange peels and cook until it boils. Reduce the heat to medium low around 105 – 110, and simmer until the peels are translucent and soft. This step might take you 100 – 120 minutes to dry all the water and soften the oranges peels. You can stir the orange peels when cooking it and try not to burn the orange peels in the bottom of the saucepan. After this step you can cover your orange peels over sugar to make a sugar coat but I didn’t do it. I want to make low sugar candied orange peels.
Step 6: Dry the orange peels in the clean panel or cooking paper. There are two ways to dry the orange peels. You can keep candied orange peels in a dry room for two days or keep it in the fridge too. The second one is you can put it into the oven at 100 – 110 degrees for 10 to 20 minutes. Check it often if you don’t want your candied orange peels to be too hard. You can add chocolate flavor to the orange peel after drying it. Orange peels and chocolate are a good combination.
You can add some chocolate above the orange peels to make a different choice. Maybe I can add the picture later.
Food dryer machine can shorten the drying time of orange peels too. Turn on the machine 60 degrees for 5 hours and dry more if you like harder orange peels.
This recipe takes me 3 days to finish but you also can make it within 1 day too. I prefer a long time recipe, orange peels are soft and I still can taste the honey in candied orange peels. All the steps of this recipe are easy to make. Here is my candied orange peel, they look quite messy but don’t worry they taste good.
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You can eat it along with green tea, or hot drink in winter time or whenever you want. Candied orange peel is good to reduce the cough. Keep your warmth or healthy home-made snack. Let’s try to make this healthy low sugar candied orange peels this weekend. I promise you will not regret it when you taste it. Remember to make little more orange peels than you thought. You will eat it faster than you can imagine. Let me know what you think about my recipes. I would love to hear from you. You can check my recipe to make low sugar orange jam too. Actually you can do both of them at the same time.