I wanted to take advantage of the Florida citrus crop by preserving some of it to use next Christmas and I hate what is sold in the stores. Starting with six oranges (organic preferred), I cut off the peel with the pith (if the pith is particularily thick it can be trimmed, no flesh) and cut the peel into 1/2 inch (1 cm) strips. They weighed 300 g and I boiled them for 15 minutes in about a liter of water. I then drained them and washed them with cold water. I repeated this process once more. For very bitter fruits, this may take even more boiling cycles. I then boiled them in a 1 : 1 water / sugar syrup of 450 g each for 15 minutes and let them cool in the pan overnight. I drained them then boiled them in a 1 : 1.5 water / sugar syrup of 300 g water and 450 g sugar for 15 minutes and let them cool in the pan overnight. Finally I drained them (after warming the pan slightly) and boiled them in a 1 : 2 water / sugar syrup of 150 g water, 270 g sugar and 30 g corn syrup for 15 minutes. I then pulled them out with chop sticks and laid them out on a drying rack. They look like this:
I hope you can see that the peels are slightly tranlucent. If I've done this right, the water activity after drying will be too low to support mold and bacteria. Instead of curing with salt or nitrites, these will be cured with sugar.
When the peels are dried to just tacky, I will toss them with fine sugar to dry the surface. If you try this process with sliced kumquats, they will look like this:
Diced Buddha hand citrus will look like this:
I'm not smart enough do have come up with this on my own, I read about it here:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2011/02/ma ... #more-4456
and here:
http://www.asenjigalblogs.com/how-to-pe ... -the-peel/
One last thing - the taste is fantastic!