Candied Grapefruit Peel

Candied Grapefruit Peel

This is for my Coven Friend Nancy, who loves these. I told her they were simple to make, she could definitely do it herself, and I walked her through it, but we were just talking, she wasn’t writing it down or anything. And then the next time I went to make them I didn’t have my recipe handy and of course I couldn’t remember exactly what I was supposed to do and had to really think it through. And I was like okay there’s no way she is going to remember this from me telling her while we were drinking cocktails, since I can barely remember and I actually have done it a bunch of times. And none of those times involved cocktails.

So here are some instructions, written down. For her and for me.

The basic proportions are: For every one cup of peel, you use one-half cup sugar and one-quarter cup water (a 2:1 sugar syrup). One grapefruit results in about one cup of peel. But I really love these and they keep for a long time so usually I do more than one grapefruit at a time. So I’m going to give a recipe using two cups of grapefruit peel, which is what I made most recently, and which inspired me to finally put this post together.

Peel the grapefruit and cut the resulting pieces of peel into strips. The size of the strips doesn’t much matter, I like them a little wider than some recipes I’ve seen, which called for thin strips to make candied “threads.” Mine are more like fat matchsticks, probably between an eighth and a quarter of an inch wide, and however long the piece of peel ended up when I took it off the fruit, maybe a half-inch to an inch.

If you want to get rid of the bitterness, you can soak the peel overnight in salt water (and then rinse in fresh water) or boil it in fresh water multiple times (boil, dump, rinse; fill with fresh water, boil, dump, rinse). The more times you boil it, the more bitterness you get out and the sweeter your end result will be. However, for me, the bitterness is actually what I like about these, so I do not soak them or rinse them at all, I just cut them into pieces and go straight to the candying part. (I do wash the grapefruit before I start … and if I cared more about pesticides I might start with organic grapefruit, but I am generally fatalistic at this point, so it is hit or miss whether I use organic or conventional fruit.)

So here is the actual recipe:

Candied Grapefruit Peel
2 cups grapefruit peel, cut into strips
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Put the water and sugar in a small saucepan and stir to combine. Place over high heat and bring to a boil, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Add the grapefruit peel pieces and stir to coat the pieces. Reduce the heat, if necessary, to keep from boiling over, but continue to boil, stirring occasionally, until all of the syrup is absorbed and the grapefruit pieces are translucent.

Remove the peel pieces from the pan and spread on a cooling rack to dry. If desired, roll the pieces in granulated sugar to coat the outside with sugar.

The first few times I made these I struggled to get it right — either the syrup wasn’t right, or the ratio of syrup to peel wasn’t right, I was never quite sure. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes when I had too much syrup, I ended up with leftover grapefruit-flavored syrup, which was actually delicious mixed in drinks. So if you want that, you could use less grapefruit and more syrup (e.g., use the same amount of syrup as above with 1 cup of grapefruit) and you should end up with leftover syrup that you can use in other recipes. (You would stop cooking the grapefruit when it was translucent, even if there was still syrup left in the pan.)

I also made them several times when they didn’t “candy” properly, they were just chewy sweet grapefruit peels, almost like gummies. It was okay, but not as good as when they are candied for real. I think this was either because (a) I didn’t cook them long enough (i.e., I got impatient and took them off before all of the syrup was absorbed), or (b) because the sugar-to-water ratio was wrong. It’s really hard to not flip the amounts of water and sugar, it feels unnatural to use more sugar than water, but that’s what a 2:1 sugar syrup is, twice as much sugar as water, so just follow the recipe, don’t do what it feels like you should be doing. The sugar melts into liquid and the water boils off and that is the whole point of candy, to pack as much sugar as possible into the smallest amount of space.

I eat it just like any other kind of candy. You can also use it as a garnish on baked goods, or you can combine with dark chocolate, which is also tasty. Or you can add it to cocktails. And note that you can do the same thing with any other kind of citrus peel, lemons or limes or oranges. But I like grapefruit the best.

And now the next time I go to make this and can’t remember what I’m supposed to do, I can just look here. Problem solved.