Wait! Save Those Orange Peels!

And lemon and lime peels. Sure, they’re great for putting down your garbage disposal for a quick refresh and odor eliminator, and of course, they can be composted like any other organic material. Some folks like burning orange peels on the stove for scents (but that smell, frankly, makes me gag)

But what if you have a LOT of peels waiting to be disposed of? I mean, what if you went on a tangerine eating binge or happened to make a huge pitcher of pisco sour and now you have dozens of sweet smelling peels to get rid off? Don’t throw them away! Make some candied citrus peel instead!

I took my cue from Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution which is one of my must-have kitchen items. I’m sending you to a nearly identical one from Epicurious.  The recipe is for  12 lemons or 8 navel oranges or 5 pink grapefruit (but smitten kitchen warns that a similar recipe from Jacques Torres didn’t really work with grapefruit).

You’ll only need the peels, water, and sugar (I used turbinado raw cane sugar), and a candy thermometer, but you will need some time. Between cooking and cooling, this process will take you the weekend, but you will spend very little of that time actually tending the recipe. More bonuses: a.) your house will smell fabulous and b.) you will be left with a hefty batch of slightly citrus-y simple syrup to use with your next batch of pisco sours.

With my first attempt at candied citrus peels, the tangerines are much tastier than the limes that I threw in. I’m guessing because I didn’t completely remove all of the bitter white pith from the limes. So, if I had to add some advice here, it would be to diligently remove the bitter-factor before commencing with the candying.

So there you have it, a tasty way to recycle and reuse those orange peels you almost threw away.