Zabby, I would be glad to hear what you figured out because I love them too. I also like them in a spinach salad or chilled and out of the can. Well, Mandarins, anyway. But definitely love fresh Clementines and they are popping up around here in the grocery, too. Lori

Z,
Here's a blog entry from Marisa at Food in Jars about canning clementines. Looks easy enough, eh?

Here is a link that might be useful: Canned Clementines from Food in Jars Blog

The NCHFP, of course, has citrus instructions. You raw pack citrus sections. I have done it with mandarin oranges. They do not taste the same as commercial mandarins, and you have to remove as much white pith as possible if you don't want white stuff settling in the bottom of the jars over time.

My family likes the sections in summer fruit salads when fresh mandarins are not available. I use light syrup. I do not can oranges mixed with grapefruit as my kids do not like that combo.

Very easy, if time consuming to de-pith the sections.

Enjoy those oranges!

Sharon

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP how to can citrus

zabby I am one of those blessed with citrus (over)abundance, but I am by no means an expert in canning.

Just wanted to share our experience which was not very good. We canned slices of different citrus in syrup (tried different amounts of sugar, light or heavy syrups), but did not care for the final product(s) at all. Admittedly, clementines were not on that list, we did grapefruits, minneolas and kumquats. The kumquats were pretty good, the rest was not. I figured why not try canning? since citrus fruit is available commercially in cans and jars, there must be a way? I have not found it yet. I have not tried the dry packing, but for me it would not be worth it.

The closest fruit I have to clementines might be satsuma tangerines? we went from zero production to quite a bit (maybe 100?) and just ate them all fresh, I still have 4 left to eat! If I was so lucky next year to have more than we can eat, we will freeze them.

One way we found that preserves the citrus well is simply separate the pieces and freeze. I have used frozen citrus thawed out and added to summer salads and that was a very nice addition. I did not care much for the thawed out frozen juice but the frozen fruit pieces were really good I thought. The frozen juice works very well for marmalades though.

I don't want to discourage you from trying again, I would just recommend that you try a small batch first, then taste, then decide, do it again or not? for us it is NOT, but taste preferences vary so much as we all know.

I can clementines all the time in a light syrup.
It is very time consuming if you use small ones as I do as it takes 9 to 10 to fill a 12 ounce jar.
Pulling off all the fine strings is what takes the time. I separate each segment so also remove the strings between the segments. I use a small knife to cut the segment on the inside when I encounter the odd seed.
The skin on the segments DO NOT seem in any way to degrade the taste of the fruit. With a light syrup, they maintain a slight tart taste when you bit into a segment. Quite a nice difference between the interior of the segments and the juice.
I started using dried cranberries as markers for different batch. I make some batches with just light syrup, some with extra light syrup and a Tbsp. of honey in each 12 ounce jar, some with a pineapple and mango sauce between the segments, and some with a pineapple, cranberry, and mango sauce between the segments. The placement of the cranberries and the amount in the bottom of the jar tells me what batch is what (except with the cranberry where it is not necessary). The dried cranberries are a nice addition.
The tangerine with the fruit sauce is actually a take off of the BBB (current edition) SUNSHINE CITRUS DESSERT SAUCE on page 181.
It is great on biscuits, pound, angel food cake, chicken, pork, salmon, BBQ dishes as a glaze when mixed with a little honey, in salads or salad dressings, or just in a little dish for a palette cleaner on the plate between courses. Let your creativity be your guide.
We get more tangerines than we can eat or give away here in So. Calif. so canning them (in the absence of freezer space) is a great alternative to letting them rot under the trees.
The peels can be dried or candied and used in all kinds of bakery products, or just dipped in dark chocolate and enjoyed. I frankly enjoy just eating them candied as they are. I use some tangerine peel tonight in some soda bread I baked and used a little 3 days ago in a raisin pie. Just some suggestions.
My perspective on their use.
Jim in So Calif

gosh, thanks, everyone!

gardengalrn, I'll let you know what my experience is. We did indeed venture out in the snow tonight to buy 3 more boxes of clementines. (We found about 15% of spoilage in our last box --- not mould or rot but serious bruising; these poor things seem to have travelled rather rough....) But the ones that were good were very, very good!

Malna, those look lovely, don't they? But what's her big idea not having actually TRIED them?! ;-p

Sharon, I wonder WHY they recommend canning with grapefruit. Sounds like your family liked the mandarins on their own well enough.

Cabrita, I REALLY appreciate your firsthand experience! Very good to know what someone DOESN'T like. And I'm going to try freezing some, too --- I never would have thought of that; would have expected them to bust their thin section skins when frozen and become a pulpy mess. Looking forward to trying both....

jimnginger, I'll use small jars (I mostly use canned fruit for breakfast, most often mixed with fresh for fruit salad, so use pint and half-pint jars) so hopefully will fill 'em up faster. ;-) Cute trick with the cranberries! Maybe I'll do some fresh cranberries with some of the jars; should look purty, I would think!

Will report on how it goes. DH has agreed to help me peel tomorrow night and I'll probably can on Saturday.

Z
P.S. Where's bejay? She knows her citrus, I know!

Hi Zabby -

Go for it girl! I'm still in the "research phase" when it comes to citrus anyway.

But from my past experience, I agree that canned citrus isn't what I would like it to be. Perhaps someone can come up with answers. Maybe the cranberry add is a plus. I did make some juice with cranberry and citrus - thinking I would BWB them in my new cute Weck containers - small size juice glasses.

After I finished them tho - I noted quite a bit of cloudy material, and with the "safe-thing" in mind, decided to freeze them, and we enjoyed them once they thawed in the fridge.

But - I'm still looking. I did find that citrus can be variable in their individual acid content - especially limes and lemons. Also - like you - found adding grapefruit seemed to please the experts - but ???

So for the time being, my only suggestion is to freeze those clementines - but I hate the idea, cuz its not adventure at all, its already in the books.

We have quite a lot of mandarins - a small semi-dwarf tree that I planted over 10 years ago, that blesses us with lots of fruit starting around November/December, when other oranges are not available. It is a bit of tedium to peel and section and pull off strings, but well worth the effort when eating time comes. I usually just pop those sections in a freezer container - sometimes with simple syrup, sometimes water, sometimes just add sugar, then freeze.

My only experience with canning them - gave a mushy finished product, that had very little flavor or texture - certainly not what I expected. Even commercial mandarin oranges in those small cans - have an altered taste - after having preserved my own by freeze method.

So - I'm still looking for answers to citrus too - and read these posting with anticipation - cuz I hate to say it, but not much to offer. I - too - wonder what strange substance grapefruit has - that makes It SO SAFE. ??

My only other offering is with limes - they are handy frozen in small size ice cube trays - sometimes made into lime curd, sherbet, sorbet - but unfortunately ALL frozen.

One other idea comes to mind - perhaps the pulpy material that comes when extracting the juice - plays a role in its being un-cannable. This leaves a fine sediment - but to remove it - gives a watery substance that is not worthy of preserving.

Sorry - I can't add much to this -

Just another 2 c's.

Bejay

Thanks, Bejay! I knew you'd have some insight & experience to add to my collection.

The really puzzling thing about the grapefruit is that the experts seem to me be saying not that including it makes canning the citrus SAFER but that it makes the product a BETTER QUALITY. (To which one has to respond, "But if one wanted it to taste like mandarins or clementines, how cam making it taste more like grapefruit be "better"?)

I'm thinking of a plan where we
- freeze some in dry sections --- on trays, then, when they're solid, pack in bags
- freeze some in syrup
- can some in light syrup
- can some in heavier syrup with some cranberries (and cranberry juice?)

Am thinking, too, that I'll make my syrups with some nice local honey (yes, it's pasteurized, nobody panic, please). So if the syrup ends up changing the flavour a lot it'll at least be a flavour I like!

Will report back.

Looks like clementines are on sale at a different store this coming week, so maybe I'll get some more later and try marmalade. I'm not a fan of the traditional bitter marmalades but there are some recipes out there for us nontraditional folks, I know, and I'm thinking there might be a reason that marmalade is such a long-standing way of serving citrus out of season. (Five hundred years of British nannies can't be wrong?)

Z

Grapefruit does not seem to get flat like oranges get when canned. They retain their "bite" and thus ameliorate the flatness of the oranges. Apparently, there are a couple of enzymes that are responsible for the oranges unique flavor and it is quickly destroyed by high temps over 190 degrees F.
That is why many of us pack our orange slices with grapefruit. I pack mine with Ruby Reds from Texas (big ones here are 4 for $1.00 in season on sale) and they make a beautiful jarred product that also tastes good. Each fruit retains its unique taste but canning/heating take alot of the bite out of the entire product. It still tastes great, just different. Kind of like loving green beans fresh and canned - very different but both enjoyed.
I couple tangerines with pineapple when I jar them because the pineapple does not get flat. I have found however that when I raw pack individual tangerine sections that they maintain a "bite" in your mouth and the pineapple is a very complimentary flavor. I always use pineapple fresh ($0.88 cent each now on sale)as they are cheaper than canned and I have a real thing about canning already canned products.
I did can some version of the BBB Strawberry Lemonade Drink base using tangerine juice, lemon juice, and strawberries. Knowing that heat kills the flavor of orange products, I used low temp. pasteurization to both heat and process my juice base. I did NOT let the temp. rise over 190 degrees F. during the whole process.
I will report back on how this turns out. No signs of spoilage yet in the jars (sitting 1 month but too cold for cold lemonade to drink just yet).
Jim in So. Calif.

Jim,

Thanks much for the info on the enzymes --- I was very curious.

Wow, 88 cents for a whole pineapple? You'd think you were in California or something. Up here in the True North, we can get them on sale at No Frills for $1.99 when we're lucky. Still comes out cheaper than canned (unless maybe you got a great big #10 can from Costco or something).

I wish I'd gotten pineapple now to try some of those slices in with my clementines. Maybe I'll go back for one tomorrow.

DH and I just peeled, sectioned, and de-stringed three boxes of clementines while watching the curling finals and it's like we have a giant bowl of sunshine. Pretty as can be!

Don't think I can stay up to can tonight but will try tomorrow. I did get a big jar of yummy local honey to make my syrup with.

Will let you all know how it goes!

Z

One other item of interest - because we have so many limes that would go to waste otherwise, I made some lime jelly, which we prefer over traditional marmalades.

About a year ago, I was interested in making homemade pectin (from rinds of citrus). It involves cooking/softening the rinds then squeezing the pectin out of them in a cheesecloth bag. I saved this material by freezing it and decided I'd better make use of it recently.

Sooo - I made lime jelly, which was very easy. Just adding juice to the pectin, bringing to boil (have to check recipe for exact timing) but it was easy and not overcooked. The end result was something like a lime-honey, and I use it in recipes calling for honey (my neighbors rebelled at my bees swarming into their garage).

The only other comment on the lime jelly is - that it did crystalize - which honey will do as well. It can be reversed by heating in a pan of water, however.

I'm anxious to see how you like the frozen mandarins - and which syrup works best for you. Also, I sometimes add lemon juice to my fruit syrups - seems to bring out extra flavor.

Bejay

I was inspired by the Food in Jars blog so I canned my first batch of mandarin. My daughter helped me peel and de-vein 2.5 boxes while we watched "Little House on The Prairie". I experimented with a few jars. We placed a half piece of star anise in one, two thin slices ginger in another, three cloves in a third jar and a small piece of cinnamon in a fourth jar. I had a total of 12 jars - some pints, some smaller. Yesterday I opened the jar with the star anise. Nice, real nice, not a strong anise taste. It just seemed to smell like something special. After I taste all the spiced jars and pick out a favorite, I will put some of those spices in a cheese cloth bag and use it to flavor the simple syrup in my next batch. I think ginger would go nice with a honey syrup.

kim

Here is link to my website. I blog about gardening, preserving food, cooking, baking, sewing and learning to be more self reliant and independent while living in a village.

Here is a link that might be useful: Little Homestead in the Village

OK, did it.
DH helped me peel (fast work) & de-vein (slow work!) on Saturday night, and I canned yesterday.

I am grateful to Sharon for posting the NCFHP link b/c it gave instructions only for raw pack for BWB, so I took that to be a hint and did not heat them in syrup, which I otherwise would have done (since that's how I do other fruits). They held their shape well, but if I'd cooked them first I suspect I'd have gotten mush as in my first sad canning attempt.

I made light syrup with half local honey (nothing fancy, but a definite step up from Billy Bee). You can taste the honey in the syrup so I would recommend that.

I canned

- some plain
- some with pineapple (thanks to jim's recommendation; the one I was able to get that was ripe wasn't real sweet or flavourful, but the hope was to get some of its "tang" --- the clementines were an especially sweet, flavourful batch)
- some with dried cranberries (the store-bougth sweetened "craisin" kind; I couldn't find any fresh)

Then I froze
- some in sections on a tray, packing into a bag when they were hard, as I do with berries
- some in small containers with honey syrup

This a.m. we tried one of the plain canned jars. As mentioned, the texture was better than I'd feared --- soft and squishy, of course, but so is all canned fruit in my experience. If anyting, closer in texture to fresh clementines than, say, canned pears are to fresh pears.

The flavour was OK, but definitely toned WAY down an without, as had been suggested, much of the "zing" of citrus. I wish I'd thought to put in a bit of lemon juice as I think it could have helped.

Our though was that it was not remotely like eating fresh clemetines, but worth doing in order to be able to open a jar and add to fruit salad in the summer & fall, when we have fresh fruits of other kind and the imported citrus is at its most expensive and least flavourful. Same as we do to peaches and pears, in order to open and add to fruit salad in the winter with the freshly-truckd-up-from-Florida citrus.

Will try the other variations and report back; looking forward to Kim's reports, too! To use the frozen ones for our purposes, which mainly involve breakfast, will mean a bit more organization (taking a container out of the freezer the night before); remains to be seen if we can manage it! ;-)

Z
P.S> thanks again for everyone's comments and advice etc. I really appreciate it!