Thursday, August 25, 2011

Using Everything -- Orange Peel Edition

I always feel like I'm leaving such a waste just throwing out perfectly good orange peels.  But the thought of constantly candying them is exhausting.  Here are some other uses for the mighty orange peel.
  

Things to do with Orange Peels



Simmering Potpourri!
http://www.easy-homemade-recipes.com/simmering-potpourri.html
You really don't need a recipe for this, but I've provided a link in case it makes you feel more confident the first few times to follow a list.

Take your Orange peels and place into a pot with enough water to cover them, add solid dashes of nice smelling spices from the cupboard (cinnamon, all spice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, etc), add dashes of nice smelling extracts (vanilla, almond, lemon).  Boil.  Add water as needed.  Yay!  Perfect for boiling after cooking smelly things, like brussels sprouts.

Chocolate covered orange peels!
Here's a good recipe to get you started...you don't need to use navel orange peel, any will do.
Here's another recipe for candying the peel: RECIPE!

Flavor your Chicken Stock!
I always save carcasses to make stock.  Adding orange and/or lemon peels to whatever herbs you use gives the boil gives a nice flavor.

Make Orange Zest!
Excellent for recipes, but you can't keep it for more than a week, so have some baking in mind.
Chef Paul is back (remember from how to debone a chicken?) and shows you how to zest:

It doesn't have to be so pretty though, you can zest by grating it finely as well!

Make Orange Sugar!
Great to give as a gift, or use in your favorite tea this little tip from tip-nut is one of my favorites.

1¼ cup grated orange peel
1 cup sugar
  • Grate the peel from the oranges. Do not remove any of the pith (white part of the skin).
  • Keep the grated peel free from juice.
  • Rub the grated orange peel into the sugar.
  • Store in an airtight container and refrigerate until needed. 
Bake a Cake!
From a fellow Blogger....The Timid Cook (y'all should give her some love!):
You will need:

Flour: 2 cups
Baking powder: 1tsp
Sugar: 1 cup
Eggs: 3
Vegetable oil: 3/4 cup
Orange essence: 1 tsp or Orange marmalade: 1 tbsp
Vanilla essence: 1 tsp
Orange peels: 1/2 cup
Warm milk
Butter

How to:
  1. Mix 1 & 1/3 cup flour and baking powder and sieve this three times.
  2. In a bowl, add 3/4 cup oil and 1 cup powdered sugar. Mix well.
  3. To this add two tbsp flour followed by one egg and mix well. Then add another 2 tbsp flour and another egg. Repeat this till all the three eggs are in the batter.
  4. Add a bit of warm milk to smoothen the batter.
  5. Add 1 tsp each of orange essence and vanilla essence. If you don't have orange essence just add 1 tbsp marmalade and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence and add half a cup of chopped orange peel.
  6. Grease a tin with butter or oil and dust with flour. Pour the batter and bake in an oven (preheated for 5 minutes) at medium for 40-50 minutes or till a inserted knife comes out clean.

    Super Bonus Section!
    Kitchen Chemistry....here's a lab experiment from Columbia that walks you through the Steam Distillation of Orange Oil.  It was very interesting to read through and could be fun to try if I can convince any of my Chemist friends to let me have a go in their lab....until then:
    a .pdf for you detailing steam distillation of orange oil!


    Credits
    Image: Orange Wedge a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from manicomi's photostream

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