Orange-Juniper-Port Marmalade

This morning, I made Orange-Juniper-Port (OJP) marmalade. I found lots of recipes to make an OJP sauce for duck or pork, so I knew the flavors would go well together, but I couldn't find anything specific to making a marmalade.

Then I found this recipe for Lemon & Juniper marmalade, which I used to create my own recipe. I also used safe canning practices, unlike what he does in the recipe.... 

So here's my recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups puréed oranges

3 Tbsp whole juniper berries (got these from my backyard bushes)

1.5 cups water (see my note below)

1/2 cup port wine

1 kg sugar (NOTE: I weighed this on my kitchen scale and found it to come up to the 1 Qt mark on my Cambro container.) (also note: I think this is too much sugar. Next time, I'll try it with half as much, then add more if it's not sweet enough.)

3 Tbsp powdered pectin (plus 1/4 cup of water to dissolve the pectin before adding it to the pot)

Take 1 Tbsp juniper berries and pulverize them (I used my small blender cup, but any kind of herb or coffee grinder would work -- be sure to wash it thoroughly afterwards, unless you want your next blended thing to taste like juniper berries!), then set them aside for later use.

Take the remaining 2 Tbsp juniper berries and smash them. I used my Sauer Stick (used to pound cabbage for sauerkraut), which worked perfectly. You could use a mortar and pestle if you have one. Heck, a rolling pin might even work. Put the smashed berries into a small muslin bag and tie it off.

In a large pot, combine the oranges, the water, the port wine, and the muslin bag. Bring to a boil on high heat, then simmer for 10 minutes on low heat with the lid on. Stir to prevent burning. I used my potato masher to stir the mixture and also to squeeze the muslin bag to get all the junipery goodness into the jelly!

orange pulp, port, and the muslin bag with smashed juniper berries

After the 10 minutes, remove the lid. Add the powdered juniper and the sugar and cook for another 10 minutes on low, stirring to prevent burning.

Sugar + pulverized juniper berries

After 10 minutes, remove the muslin bag, and add 3 T pectin (dissolved in 1/4 cup water) to the pot. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil and boil hard for one minute. Check for gel set.

Pour into hot jars and process for 15 minutes.

It's honey-colored!

Note: The other day I cleaned out my fridge, and as part of that process, I transferred the contents of an almost-empty large jar of raspberry jelly into a smaller container. I couldn't get all the remnants of jelly out of the jar because my spatula was too big, so I put some water into the jar and shook it up, then saved the water for later use -- which turned out to be this recipe! I used it as part of the water.

ADDENDUM: After finishing the marmalade, I took the smashed juniper berries (which were covered in marmalade) and put them outside by an ant hill on our property. Those ants sure are scurrying around madly!