I save orange rinds from time to time, cook them in simple syrup, and
> dry them for use in baking. A little chopped candied orange is amazing
> in cookies and cake, and it's much cheaper to make your own than buy it. Two questions:
1) How long can you keep orange rinds in the refrigerator before using them?
2) How do you get the pith off the inside of the rind?
I peel lemons to use the zest of the rind for making Limoncello and then press the lemons for the juice. So I am leaving the pith on the fruit.
This may have been mentioned earlier. I don't have time to read this whole string. When I see people grate orange and lemon peel, I get concerned if the peel looks perfect. These perfect looking fruits are usually sprayed with coal tar (cancer causing) dyes. They are used legally here because it's assumed that no one eats the skins of citrus fruits.
If you're going for flavor, pick orange that were naturally ripened and have some green and uneveness to the color of the skin, or else you're eating a paint job.
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 08:14:59 -0000, a day that will live in infamy, Dick Adams stood on a soapbox and proclaimed: :Dawn wrote: : :> I save orange rinds from time to time, cook them in simple syrup, and :> dry them for use in baking. A little chopped candied orange is amazing :> in cookies and cake, and it's much cheaper to make your own than buy it. : If you happen to have a garbage disposal in your sink, grinding up citrus peels in it will (a) help clean the grease & muck off the blades, and (b) make the sink smell delicious!
Easy way is to remove the outer layer of the peel with either a sharp knife or a citrus tool. (A cheap little gizmo that is designed for pealing and de-zesting citrus.) You want to slice deep enough that you do not cut through the oil sacks on the outer rind. Best done before the peel is removed from the orange.
This is why a rational person scrubs their citrus with steel wool, then thoroughly washs then, and finally wipes them clean with alcohol. We all know the problems of pesticdes.
My home-grown oranges have no green on them. Are you sure the dye is poisonous? I think the ethnic markets buy "factory seconds" because the dye jobs are frequently really bad -- the sharp line between green and orange is a dead giveaway.
I'd always thought that California oranges, primarily for eating, were the pretty ones, and Florida oranges, primarily for juicing, were the ones with uneven color and green shades. I'd never heard it had anything to do with dyes. And if there is something cancer-causing or possibly cancer-causing in something they put on the outside of an orange, with the laws as strict as they are in California, wouldn't there be warnings all over?
A fairly distinct line between green and orange on a Florida orange could be caused by the way the sun hits the orange as it ripens.
"In 1960, amendments to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 added the so-called Delaney anti-cancer clause to FDA's legal mandate. Among other things, the clause prohibits marketing any color additive the agency has found to cause cancer in animals or humans, regardless of amount."
I've seen lots of citrus fruit on trees that could not possibly have been artificially colored, and it looked as good or better than the best-looking fruit I've seen in stores.
Your assertion that "These perfect looking fruits are usually sprayed with coal tar (cancer causing) dyes." is totally bogus.
OK here is the scoop on oranges. Sunkist, California's premium brand of navel oranges do not use pesticides. There is one bug that attacks them and that is controlled with a good bug. Occasionally the good bug leaves a scaly patch on the orange, and this becomes a second and receives something other than the Sunkist trademark even though the fruit is the same, just a little less pretty.
Navel oranges also have an interesting thing happen to them. They start out green, turn bright orange when ripe and if left on the tree they will start to re-green. The oranges that re-green are not stamped with the Sunkist brand but rather the second label. A little bit of re-green however does not diminish the quality of the fruit. The farmer is gambling leaving the fruit on the tree longer hoping the price will rise
All oranges are coated with a food grade wax that is non toxic and keeps the fruit from drying out and keeps it looking shiny and attractive.
Roger, the header on your response has me a little rattled. Under organization it says,"a proud member of teamSYIX". Could that be a typo and really be team STYIX? If so, what kind of damnable beings do you hang-out with?
Well, having addressed this mornings psychotic thoughts, let's move along to the crux of the matter, namely from what font of knowledge did you learn about Sunkist's agricultural and marketing practices? I'm not saying that it's wrong. I just wonder whence it came.
In the last few years, I have come to suspend judgement on assertions of fact made by people who should know i.e. make the least little hundreds of mistakes and the next thing you know your in the middle of a war about something that was really important, even though it (the reason) keeps changing. You or I can make any fool assertion we want but if a company has it in writing, under it's logo, they are held responsible for it. As for the underfunded and over legislated FDA, they are hamstrung over additives unless they (the additives) kill a lot of people, very quickly.
So what's the poop (navel oranges, navel talk:-) on your scoop?
And in conclusion, have you ever wondered what an acceptable level of escherichia coli in your food is?
And some people want to know why I like to grow as much of my own food as I can, pfff.
One of my father's high school buddies is a grower for Sunkist in southern CA. Whan I was a lad we had a class in school where they talked about the "good bugs" and one of the good bugs was the ones they talked about was the one they used on the oranges. When I asked if he used the good bugs, he not only confirmed this but took me into the orchard and showed me. He seemed real happy to expalin the whole opperation and how the growers co-op markets the citrus.
I learned all kinds of things like the fact that when they pick oranges they do not pluck them from the tree, they have special pliers that look liike wire cutters to cut the stem close to the fruit. This is done for two reasons. First, depending on the amount grip the stem has it sometimes pulls a chunk of the peal off the fruit, and second because the little bit of exposed pith that could result allows the fruit to spoil prematurly.
Seems to me that this farmer's co op is serious about bringing good food to market.
So inless things have substanttially changed in the past 30 years, that is the source of my information.
I just surfed the Sunkist website looking to see if I could find more information and it appears I was not completly up to date on my information. They apperantly do use some form of pesticide, not supprizing really given that nasty bugs like medeteranian fruit flys can kill the industry, but as for me I am not worried. I am sure that they would be happy to answer any direct inquiries about the saftey of their produce.
You can reach them at
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and you also can get one of those pealer things I mentioned.
"Roger Shoaf" in news: snipped-for-privacy@news01.syix.com:
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?q=citrus+rust+predator++citrus has uncommon phenomenon among fruit regarding (rind) color:
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is markedly affected by the temperature regime during the ripening period and thereafter. Maximum color intensity develops when the fruit is subjected to considerable chilling?normally the result of cold nights. In arid, subtropical climates, this is assured by the prevalent cool nights (associated with the wide diurnal fluctuations in temperature) which characterize the fall and winter months. Primarily because of warmer nights (associated with small diurnal temperature variations), color development in semitropical climates is much slower and the intensity ultimately attained considerably lower, with the possible exception of some of the mandarins, notably Dancy tangerine. Other fruit characters materially affected by atmospheric humidity during the growing season include rind surface, thickness, texture and adherence, texture of the flesh (juice vesicles and carpellary membranes), and juice content. Thus, in semitropical regions such as Florida, the rind is smoother, thinner, softer, and more tightly adherent, the flesh and carpellary membranes are tenderer, and the juice content is higher than in such subtropical regions as California. Flavor is markedly influenced by the same conditions that are primarily responsible for the intensity of color development [snip]
i think some of the color can "revert" to green if fruit needs to ripen after the winter, so , picking season influences rind color when sold. and different varieties ripen in different seasons.
without researching now, i think there are *other* fruit flies that are trouble in the central and east US
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