Lime marmalade

Learn how to make lime marmalade with this easy recipe, which makes a small batch from whole limes, sugar, and lemon juice, and without adding any commercial pectin.

Taking advantage of citrus season is one of the best ways to beat the winter blues, and making marmalade is a fun weekend activity that is so rewarding, especially considering that it's minimal effort. Yes, there are a lot of steps, but there's nothing too complicated:

1. Boil the sliced citrus limes in a large pot of water, until they are very tender and soft, for over an hour.
2. Combine the softened sliced limes with sugar and lemon juice.
3. Boil the lime marmalade to 219–220 ºF (104–105 ºC). This is the ideal setting temperature for marmalade based on my tests.
4. Transfer the marmalade to clean jars to seal them using either the water bath method or by inverting the jars for 2 minutes.

Jump to:

• What you need to make this marmalade recipe
• Special equipment
• Cookbooks on Preserves
• The method
• How to tell when the marmalade has boiled enough
• Methods for sealing jars of homemade preserves
• Frequently asked questions
• 📖 Recipe

What you need to make this marmalade recipe

The best way to make lime marmalade is with the whole fruit because it's simple to do and doesn't require any added pectin. All you need are:

• whole limes, washed and scrubbed well
• water—tap water is fine: if you can drink it, then you can make marmalade with it
• sugar—granulated or special fine sugar works great here, and you don't need to invest in super fine sugar, which is more expensive. Super fine sugar will dissolve faster than regular granulated sugar, but the results will be the same!
• lemon juice—I prefer the taste of freshly squeezed lemon juice, as opposed to the bottled kind, and since the recipe already has a lot of acid present, you don't need to worry about the pH

Do not use jam sugar, also called gelling sugar, for this recipe. Jam sugar actually combines fine sugar with pectin and an acid (like citric acid) to promote gelling and set when making jams, marmalades, and sugar-based preserves. You do not need extra pectin for this and the other marmalade recipes on this site so please use regular granulated or fine sugar for this recipe!

Types of limes

For this recipe, we are using standard grocery store limes. The variety is Persian or Tahitian limes, at least in North America. They are seedless and not too small, which makes them very easy to handle. These limes are sour with bitter notes.

You could also try this recipe with key limes, also known as Mexican limes. Use the same weight of fruit as suggested in the ingredients for this recipe, so use 650 grams of key limes to make key lime marmalade. Note that key limes have seeds, so you will have to remove them as you slice the fruit.

Special equipment

Surprisingly, you actually don't need anything special to make marmalade at home from scratch. You will need:

• a knife and cutting board to slice the fruit
• a big heavy-bottomed pot
• a wooden spoon or a heatproof silicone spatula
• canning jars and lids (always use new lids to ensure the rubber seal isn't damaged)
• a canning kit—you can read all about the components of a home canning kit but usually they come with a non-reactive funnel, a gauge for measuring the headspace between the surface of preserves and the lip of the jar, an air bubble remover, and a magnet for easily picking up the lids
• a digital thermometer, like a Thermapen or the hands-free Dot which are fast reading, accurate thermometers recommended for home cooks and bakers

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Cookbooks on Preserves

If you are interested in simple recipes and techniques for making preserves, like this marmalade, check out Camilla Wynne's books on preserving:

• Preservation Society Home Preserves (available on Amazon in English), and it's also in her book Les Conserves Selon Camilla (available on Amazon in French)
• Jam Bakes (available on Amazon), which is dedicated to making preserves and baking with them too!

I used both these books to research this recipe and follow Camilla Wynne's methods closely as she taught me how to make Seville orange marmalade years ago. Highly recommend!

The method

For most marmalade recipes on this site, we use the whole fruit method, where you immerse the whole fruit in a large volume of cold water, and bring to a boil, cooking for 1–2 hours, until the fruit is very tender, so soft that you could use your hands to easily tear the fruit apart. With this method, you slice the whole soft fruit, so the cut of the peel can be quite rustic and more coarse, less "refined" than you might want. I used this method to make classic orange marmalade, grapefruit marmalade, and even three fruit marmalade.

If you want a finer cut marmalade, start with sliced citrus fruit. With this method we are still using the whole fruit, meaning peel, pith, flesh, and all, but we are starting the process with sliced citrus instead of the whole fruit. This is the method we are using to make this lime marmalade.

The sliced citrus is brought to a boil in lots of water, and it's simmered for two hours, until very soft and tender.

Avoiding chewy peel

One of the big problems with making marmalade is that the peel can end up hard and chewy if you don't handle the fruit correctly. To avoid this, you have to boil the whole fruit (or sliced fruit in this case, or sliced peel) for over 1 hour, until the peel is extremely tender and so soft you can tear the fruit without using any force. Whole citrus fruit should be so soft you can poke the handle of a wooden spoon or even your thumb through the fruit without any effort. One visual cue for knowing how long to boil sliced citrus is to observe the pith (the white part of the peel). The pith should no longer be opaque and completely translucent. You should see no patches of white from the pith. If any remain, the peel will be chewy.

If you find your water has evaporated before the sliced fruit has cooked long enough, add more water. This will give the citrus peel more time time to cook and then, all you have to do is boil it down again to evaporate off the excess water.

For this recipe, you do not need to remove the pith of the fruit from the peel, but you do need to take the time to properly soften the sliced fruit before adding sugar and proceeding with marmalade-making. If you don't do this step correctly, the peel will be tough and the marmalade will be inedible, unless you strain out the toughened pieces of peel.

How to tell when the marmalade has boiled enough

Once you've added the sugar and the lemon juice, it's time to cook the marmalade. There are many ways to determine if you have hit the marmalade setting point:

• watch the temperature: use a digital thermometer to monitor the evolution of the temperature as you boil the mixture of citrus, sugar, and lemon juice. The setting point for marmalade is 104–105 ºC (220 ºF).
• watch the bubbles: early in the cooking process, the bubbles form and pop fast, whereas when you've hit the setting point, the bubbles are more stable, resembling blinking fish eyes
• watch the texture: marmalade boiled to the setting point is viscous and will drop in thick sheets off a spatula or wooden spoon, as opposed to a more fluid liquid texture at the beginning.
• use a frozen plate to do the plate test: freeze a few side plates or saucers in the freezer for an hour, then place a dollop of the cooked, hot marmalade on the plate, and put it back in the freezer for 1 minute. Retrieve the plate and nudge the dollop with your fingertip: does it wrinkle and seem "set"?

If you use a few of these tests and the marmalade passes inspection, you're ready to transfer the mixture to jars to seal them. Remember for some of the more time-consuming tests, you should take the pot of marmalade off the heat or else you risk overcooking it! This is very important and if you overcook the marmalade, it will be dry and pasty, like a fruit candy or verging on a jelly or pâte de fruit, as opposed to spreadable marmalade.

Methods for sealing jars of homemade preserves

There are two major ways to seal jars of homemade preserves, and a third which is considered unsafe today (sealing with paraffin). The two best methods to seal jars are quite different, but the end result is the same: you are creating a vacuum in the jar to preserve the contents and prevent air and microbes from getting in.

For both methods, start by transferring the marmalade to warm, clean jars, then close them with lids until fingertight, then:

1. The quick and easy way: immediately invert the closed jars of hot marmalade, letting them sit upside down for 2 minutes. Flip the jars back upright, and let stand for 24 hours undisturbed.
2. The long way: bring a large canning pot to a boil, then carefully drop the jars into the boiling water bath so that they are immersed. Bring back up to a rolling boil and boil jars for 10 minutes. Carefully life the jars out of the bat and let stand for 24 hours undisturbed

With both methods, the jar lid will likely make a popping sound, a good indicator that the contents are sealed. If you don't follow either of these methods, you will have to store the jars of marmalade in the fridge.

Frequently asked questions

📖 Recipe