With an over-abundance of mandarins, making homemade mandarin cordial to enjoy for the remainder of the year is an easy choice.
Without over analysing things, if you want to preserve the juice in a concentrated form outside of the fridge, sugar is your natural preservative.
This was my first attempt ever to made cordial so I had to go back to basics and experiment. Having literally tens of kilos of fruit to play with, I had the luxury of several attempts. In fact my mandarin tree buckled under the strain of the fruit and one branch alone harvested around 100 mandarins. I couldn’t bear to waste them so in the pot they went.
I wasn’t sure of the best result so I experimented with freshly squeezed juice, with the fresh juice/pulp from an electronic juicer, and even tried pureeing them whole skin-on. The latter was so thick, yet delicious, I used it as a sauce rather than a cordial but thought the application was a little limited.
So after a few tries I set my targets on using the pulpy juice to make my mandarin cordial.
Juicing the fruit whole is a messy process but the juicing machine extracts the very last drop of juice and oils from the skin, leaving a dry pulp for the compost (but not the worm farm as they are fussy critters and don’t like citrus). This pulpy juice results in a syrupy cordial that can separate slightly after time, but nothing that a good-ole shake before opening won’t fix. The texture is thick, creamy and rich.
Many books will refer to 50% fruit juice/50% sugar as a general rule of thumb, but I wanted to reduce the sugar so opted for a 2-3 sugar-juice ratio.
What can use use mandarin cordial for anyway? Well I am about to find out! I have a great imagination and envisage many cocktails, summer punches and even baking in months to come.
My Mandarin Cordial
Ingredients
- 4 cups white sugar
- 6 cups mandarin pulpy juice (using a juicing machine)
Method
- Simply add sugar to the mandarin juice and bring to boil, stirring constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Allow to simmer for approx 45 minutes. The liquid will begin to reduce ever-so-slightly but will thicken further once cooled.
- In the meanwhile, sterilise your bottles and lids. You can use the dishwasher for the glass bottles and a saucepan of boiling water for the lids, however I used the boiling method for both as it suited. Ensure the bottles are clean, sterilised and dry before use (but still hot).
- Bung in the cordial hot (easier and less spillage with a funnel), twist your cap onto the clean bottle mouth tightly (wiped with a sterilised cloth if it gets grubby), turn upside down onto its lid, then let cool upside down for 30 minutes. I find this helps sterilise the lid from the inside.
- Once cool enough to handle wipe the outside of the bottle with a damp cloth to remove any dribbles, then flip back so the bottle stands upright. During this cooling process the lid should have vacuumed inwards and all will be well for several months.
Post Script 4 October 2015: I’ve found an application already: Apple Mandarum Cocktail!
