Candied Grapefruit Peels

Candied Citrus peels are one of those goodies that you cannot stop at one, once you start eating your first one you would want to keep eating more.  It is also nice to keep a jar in your pantry so that if you ever want to dip them in Chocolate to make some Orangettes for gifts or just chop them up to sprinkle over your ice cream, they are a good thing to keep around.  I must warn you that candying is not a fast process but it is well worth your time as they are not hard to make just time consuming.

Peels of 2 Citrus (I prefer Grapefruit but Orange works the same too)
1 cup of Sugar
Water

Day 1

• After peeling off the citrus, try to get as much pith off the peels as possible as they can make the end result more bitter
• Rinse the peels under cold water a few times
• Then put them into a one to two qt. heavy weight sauce pan
• Pour cold water so that it covers the peels then turn on high heat until it boils, boils for about 5 mins then drain the peels and fill it back up with cold water
• Repeat those steps about 3 times and this is to get rid of the bitterness of the peels
• After the 3rd time, fill back up the cold water, bring it to a boil then add the one cup of sugar then bring it to a boil again
• This time let it boil for about 10 mins on medium heat
• Take off the heat and put a plate that will fit snugly on top of the peel
• Let sit for overnight

Day 2

• Take off the plate and bring everything to a boil again and let boil for about 10 mins on medium heat
• You will notice that the sugar syrup will start to reduce and once you see that it is becoming a bit more syrupy then take off the heat and put the plate on top of peel again
• A few hours later repeat the steps again and this time syrup will reduce even more
• Take off heat and put the plate back on
• Check a few hours later to see how much syrup are left and the goal is to get a little syrup left as possible as the peel should be absorbing the syrup by this time
• You will know that they are done when they give out a shinny and transparent consistency
• Let them sit in syrup one more night

Day 3

• By this time your peels should be nice and sticky and shinny
• Take them out one by one and lay them on tip of a cooling rack and let them dry for a day

Day 4

• When they are dry (and they will still be sticky), cut them into strips
• And at this point you can preserve them one of two ways
• You can either toss the strips into caster (fine) sugar then leave them on rack to dry 24 to 48 hours more
• Or you can just keep the peels in an airtight jar and store in the fridge