Can you make your own orange peel from fresh oranges?

I was wondering if I could make my own orange peel by zesting oranges. How do they come up with the bitter, and sweet varieties? I would assume they would be fresher if you zested your own.

They come up with the bitter and sweet varieties by peeling bitter and sweet varieties of orange.

Honest! It may sound like it makes too much sense, but it's true.

That's why you can't match the dried peel. Unless, of course, you have access to fresh Bitter and Sweet Curacao oranges.

Cheers!

Bob

Of course you can, most cooks use fresh peel (or zest) all the time...just wash the skins, take a potato peeler to the fruit but make sure you DON'T take any of the bitter white stuff (the pith) behind it's really bitter. Then layer in on paper towels and let them dry...heating your oven at the lowest setting for about a half hour, then turning it off and putting the peels in there after about 10 minutes will help dry them out...

Sour oranges are considered an excellent way to marinate pork for some mexican recipes. If you can get hold of seville or bittering oranges, zest them and save the zest, then juice them to make a citrus marinade. Look up pureco pibil for an excellent recipe (which happens to go *fantastically* with a good lawnmower beer).

apparently you gotta be careful with non-organic oranges, cuz those crazy farmers will put ANYTHING on fruit including preservatives. so +1 on washing, and use organic to be safe because it should be preservative free.

Bitter oranges, aka Seville oranges, can be pretty hard to find. At least I haven't managed to track down a good source here in Seattle yet...

A good alternative (recommended by Randy Mosher in Radical Brewing) is to use the peel from one regular sweet orange alongside a quarter of a grapefruit. It won't taste quite the same, but pretty close, and I think I prefer the taste of fresh peel even though not quite the right variety to the dried stuff.

Careful, most oranges (lots of fruit and veggies actually) these days have sprayed on wax and ripening chemicals. The box of mandarin/satsuma oranges I bought recently listed the added ingredients.

The waxes and chemicals are food grade and all but I would strongly recommend organic so you don't have to worry about it.

BoB

Revvy said:

Of course you can, most cooks use fresh peel (or zest) all the time...just wash the skins, take a potato peeler to the fruit but make sure you DON'T take any of the bitter white stuff (the pith) behind it's really bitter. Then layer in on paper towels and let them dry...heating your oven at the lowest setting for about a half hour, then turning it off and putting the peels in there after about 10 minutes will help dry them out...

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With all due respect, Revvy, not using the whole peel misses the point. Please keep in mind that Curacao orange peel is a multifunction ingredient: just as chocolate malt provides color and flavor, orange peel provides flavor and bitterness to balance malt sweetness. The style in which orange peel is de rigeur - Belgian-style Wit - should have very low hops amounts. The spices balance the malt. That's why you want that really bitter pith behind the zest, at least in this application.

Your advice is the reason why I say zesting fresh oranges cannot even approximate the dried Curacao peel - it's not enough bits from the wrong variety(ies) of orange. It'll taste like oranges, sure, but the beer won't taste like it should.

There's a time and place for fresh ingredients. In brewing, there are also a couple of times and places for not fresh: dried peel in Witbier; stale, cheesy hops in Lambic; Brettanomyces in beers aged a long time in wood...

Anyhow, that's my perspective.

Bob

NQ3X said:

There's a time and place for fresh ingredients. In brewing, there are also a couple of times and places for not fresh: dried peel in Witbier; stale, cheesy hops in Lambic; Brettanomyces in beers aged a long time in wood...

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I get better success with Witbiers when I use fresh orange zest. Lots of it. With no white part of the skin.

And that's a good thing! That's what home brewing is all about - innovation and experimentation. I find better success using the traditional ingredients.

Dance with the one you love best, my friend!

Bob

We made a spiced winterfest porter, and our spice potion included fresh orange peel. We got an organic orange, cut the peel off, and scraped the white stuff off. Then steeped it in bushmills along with our other spices, strained them and added it to the beer. You could taste the fresh orange peel. It was very good.

Seville oranges shouldn't be too hard to find in season if anyone wants them.

Wrong, Organic just uses "natural" preservatives and additives. Its actually the biggest scam in the food industry right now. Use worse chemicals which are so-called natural and charge more money bc they suck. Oh that and organic farming techniques could feed only like 50% of our growing population. Ill trust the scientist over the hippie.

Wow... bringing back a 4 year old zombie. You must REALLY hate organic stuff.

xjmox14x said:

Wow... bringing back a 4 year old zombie. You must REALLY hate organic stuff.

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He must work for Monsanto.