Peeling and Sectioning Citrus

Have you ever noticed that citrus is abundant in the stores around Christmas time? That’s because Florida citrus matures in winter. From December to March, groves all over the state are harvesting a wide variety of oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, and lemons. We recently made our semi-annual u-pick tomato trek to a local farm. This time we added a detour to a u-pick orange grove and came home with two 5-gallon buckets of very ripe navel oranges. Yum!!

Ten gallons of oranges are a lot of oranges to fit into the refrigerator until we can get around to eating them. So, I canned them with the help of my dear hubby.

I have a lot of patience, but I definitely do not have the patience for peeling and sectioning that many oranges!! Add in the dozen or so ruby red grapefruit from our neighbor, and you’ve gone way beyond my tolerance level. Thankfully, my hubby came to my rescue. Not only did he find an easier method for removing the sections, he peeled and sectioned every single orange and grapefruit that I needed! Yeah, he’s a keeper.

Peeling and Sectioning Citrus

Slice off each end.

Stand upright on one of the nice flat ends.

Slice of the peel.

Slice through the pulp right next to the membrane, cutting out the sections.

Finally, squeeze the juice into your container of sections. If you aren’t canning the sections right away, the juice helps to preserve freshness until you are ready to use them.

Believe it or not, this method was much faster than anything else he tried. My husband would peel a large amount of oranges first and set about sectioning them. Our gallon-sized drink containers definitely came in handy for this project!

Thanks for stopping by! Even though I have seen many canning recipes that leave the membrane on the sections for canning, we prefer to take it off. It is a bit more work (ok, a lot more work), but the final product is that much better!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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