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Redneck zesting...too much pith left?

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Intheswamp

Intheswamp

NewBee
Registered Member
Oct 9, 2012
257
1
0
South Alabama
A friend gave us some satsumas the other day (we always look forward to this time of the year!!!). We've got 7-8 pounds of these little jewels and I've thought of starting a mead with some of them. I don't know if I will be able to or not being as we're eating them fast! ;)

What I did think about was saving the peeling for flavoring later on. I don't have a zester and our cheese grater didn't work at all in trying to zest the peeling. The peeling on the satsumas are really thin, they kind of remind me of a tangerine peeling...and they smell wonderful!!! I kept looking at the peeling laying there after eating one and thought to myself...."myself, why don't you grate the pith off of the zest?". Myself said "Ok, I'll try it!".

Well, I don't know if there's too much pitch left or not. What I did was simply rub the pith side of the peeling against the grater. Seemed to work pretty good, but I can still see "white". So, not knowing what I'm doing I figured I'd post a couple of pictures here and let some of you educated folks tell me whether this is good enough for flavoring mead or if there's too much pitch left. Here's the pics and thanks for looking...and maybe commenting! ;D

Ed

Ok, here you see on the left the pithy inside of the peeling, in the middle the outside of a piece of peeling, and on the right the inside of a piece of peeling that I have "zested" partially from the pithy side.
IMG_4002a.jpg


This picture has the middle piece of peeling turned over to the "zested" pithy side in comparison with the unzested peelings on either side. Does that piece have too much pith still attached? Is this not worth the effort?
IMG_4001a.jpg
 
I use a wood rasp on the orange side, leaves me with finely grated orange peel and no pith. I never thought about taking the white side off before, although technically that's what you're supposed to do for marmalade... I just use the grated zest, makes for a less chunky marmalade :)
 
Thanks for the replies, everybody. The satsumas are fairly thin skinned so getting much more aggressive will have me looking through a hole in the skin. Regular oranges are a good bit thicker than these but I think these have a "sweeter" orange aroma.

Using the grater on the outside surface barely produced anything. Going directly against the pith was much more productive. Next time we get some oranges I will try this with them, too. I should be able to get more aggressive with the thicker skins of the oranges.

BBF, I may just try a peeler, I've got a nice sharp one. Thanks for the suggestion.

CG, you made me go see how to make marmalade. :D

skunkboy, I don't think the spoon would do it as thin as the skin is, much more rubbing against the grater and their wouldn't be any skin left. ;)
 
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