Cull Oranges Anyone?

The answer should be “HECK YES!” from all of you!

What is a cull orange, you may be asking? Well, a cull orange is the not perfect orange. They are the oranges with wrinkles, thin skin, bruises, over-ripe or any other defect that will cause them to not sell for top dollar. They are the oranges that have been “culled out” of the orange bin you see at the market.

Its odd, cause I’ve been working in the grocery industry for a few years now, and I’d never heard this term until just this week. I first read it this past Sunday, while my husband and I were visiting a hometown farmstand that I read about in Edible San Diego (which you should TOTALLY check out, here, they have them for most of the major cities). Farm Stand West, is one of only two outlets of a local farm that grow everything from citrus to strawberries to garlic (check them out here). Citrus seemed to be their specialty. While walking around the little farmstand, I saw this big wheelbarrow looking thing filled with oranges that were only 50 cents a pound! Getting closer, the sign said “Cull Oranges, 50 cents, Great for Juicing!”

 

Now fast forward three days. I was working at the farmstand that I work at. I had been going through the Valencia oranges we were selling and noticed that some where getting just a little less than perfect. My boss walked over and started pulling out these oranges, realized that she was doing what I was just doing, and told me “eh, just cull these ones out.” WHAT?! SWEET!

 

So… I had a heavy walk home from work that day. See, we don’t have a cull bin at my stand. The best part was that I also had to “cull” the tangelos and tangerines.

 

Then next morning, I made juice. Lots and lots of juice. Delicious juice. Make sure to go through your oranges, as your cutting them in half, if you notice anything weird about the inside, just toss that one. Out of the 4 pounds I had, I had one that was a little weird on the inside. I knowwwww you don’t need a recipe, but here’s one anyway!

 

Super Delicious 'Orange' Juice

Ingredients:

• 4-5 pounds of orange citrus (makes about 2 quarts)

Directions:

1. Wash citrus, cut each in half, squeeze or juice with one of those cone-y things. Strain out the seeds and drink. Store any leftovers in the fridge and shake before drinking again.
2. Substitutes: Use all or any orange citrus you can find! Navel oranges, Valencia oranges, blood oranges, tangerines, tangelos and mandarins. Also, if you have just 4 oranges, make a cup of juice instead of a jug!

 

Seriously, the best, sweetest, most nutritious and cheapest orange juice you could ever have.

Roasted Wrinkly Pepper Hummus

Here’s what I ended up making with the roasted wrinkly peppers.

Roasted Wrinkly Pepper Hummus
Ingredients:

• ½ cup roasted red peppers (from about 4 peppers)
• 1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas) – rinsed and drained
• 1/2ish cup olive oil
• 1/4ish cup lemon juice
• 5 fresh basil leaves, torn
• 2 tbls almond butter
• 2 cloves roasted garlic
• ½ tsp onion powder
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Put everything – except salt and pepper) into a blender, food processor or magic bullet cup. Blend till hummus like – smooth, but not liquidy or chunky, somewhere in between. Add more liquid – olive oil and/or lemon juice - if needed to taste. Season with salt and pepper. This is not an exact science; add more or less of whatever you want to your liking.
2. Substitutions: if you don’t have red peppers, use roasted garlic or jalapenos or whatever else your favorite flavor is. Use grapeseed oil instead of olive oil. Use tahini (sesame paste) or cashew butter instead of almond butter. Use garlic powder or real onions.

It was really good with carrots and pretzel chips. This hummus had WAY more flavor than any store bought hummus I’ve ever used, and I attribute that to the wrinkly ripe peppers we used!

Roasted Wrinkly Peppers

I got my hands on some beautiful red peppers! The only small thing “wrong” with them, is that they were a little wrinkly. This has happened to me in the past though – I found some awesome peppers, bought to many of them to use quickly, open the fridge one day and poof… wrinkly peppers.

At this point they are a little soft and ugly for eating raw – it’s hard to dip them into hummus like this… however, they are perfect for roasting.

At the wrinkly stage of a red peppers life, we know the sugars in them have concentrated. This makes these peppers literally the best roasted peppers ever.

Here’s how I do it:

Roasted Wrinkly Peppers
Ingredients:

• 4 large, over ripe red peppers

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut the peppers into 3-4 large pieces each and discard the veins and seeds. Keeping the pieces large and flat. At this point, I also cut out any icky spots if they exist.  Foil line a pan and put a rack on it. Spray rack with non-stick spray and lay peppers on it, skin side up.
2. Cook for 20 minutes, rotate pan, cook for another 10. At this point they should have big huge black, burnt looking spots on their skin. If not, cook them until they do, then turn the heat off and let them sit in the warm oven for 10 minutes.
3. When the timer goes off, put the peppers into a plastic bag or bowl with a lid, and let them sit for 10-15 minutes in their own steam. This will loosen their skins, making them easy to peel off when their done steaming.
4. Put the peppers in a jar by themselves to use within the next couple days or cover them in olive oil to keep for around a week or two.
5. Substitutions: Use this recipe for all kinds of peppers – especially jalapenos and poblanos. My favorite!



The color the pepper skins should be when done in the oven.



The steaming process.


These peppers are great blended up in dips (which is full circle cause at first I couldn’t dip them in dip!), put on pizzas and sandwiches or cut up in pasta. Enjoy!



They are a bit hard to peel - but totally worth the effort!

Cherry-Strawberry Jellam

People are picky about their cherries. The other day someone came into the stand looking for cherries and we had some, but there weren’t many left. He took the whole box of them over to the sun and went though each and every cherry in the box. A little later he came over to me with a bag of perfect fruit. The rest however, he said needed to go into the garbage. He was right. He took every last perfect cherry and the leftovers were all pretty sad – some had super smooshy tops while others had an under-developed twin sticking off the stem. At the end of the day, no one took them – so of course, instead of throwing them away, I just had to take them home. That same day there was also 2/3 of a basket of organic strawberries that had been passed over all day. They had similar symptoms of over-ripeness.

So, what do you do with squishy, super-sweet, over-ripe fruit? It was obvious to me! Make jam! I had never made freezer jam, but I hear about it often. Freezer jam is easier to make than regular processed jam, and requires less fruit and less sugar. This was a good option for me, because I was tired and I figured there was only about a pound of fruit to use.

Here’s all I did – washed all the fruit, and discarded the really weird ones. For the strawberries, I hulled them, cut off the squishy parts, then cut the rest of the fruit in quarters. For the cherries, I de-stemmed them, pulled off any weird twins, cut off the super-over ripe part, then just pushed out the pit. Then it all went straight into the blender! The recipe called for two full cups of fruit… I was a little bit short, so I threw in a ¼ cup of blueberries I had laying around, and blended the mixture up again.

The recipe that follows, is straight from the instructions that come in the regular Sure-Jell Fruit Pectin box:

Strawberry Freezer Jam 

• 2 cups crushed strawberries (buy 1 qt. fully ripe strawberries) 
• 4 cups sugar, measured into separate bowl 
• 3/4 cup water 
• 1 pkg. SURE-JELL Fruit Pectin 

Directions:

1. Rinse 5 (1-cup) plastic containers and lids with boiling water. Dry thoroughly. Discard stems. Crush strawberries thoroughly, 1 cup at a time. Measure exactly 2 cups prepared fruit into large bowl. Stir in sugar. Let stand 10 min., stirring occasionally.
2. Mix water and pectin in small saucepan. Bring to boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Continue boiling and stirring 1 min. Add to fruit mixture; stir 3 min. or until most the sugar is dissolved. (A few sugar crystals may remain.) Fill containers immediately to within 1/2 inch of tops. Wipe off top edges of containers; immediately cover with lids.
3. Let stand at room temperature 24 hours. Jam is now ready to use. Store in refrigerator up to 3 weeks or in freezer up to 1 year. (If frozen, thaw in refrigerator before using.)
4. Substitutions: The cherry freezer jam recipe called for exactly the same quantities as the strawberry one, so I felt confident substituting half cherries. Also, I wasn’t preserving it for the long term, so chemistry wasn’t 100% important.

Also, what I make is Jellam. I hate big chunks of fruit in my jam. It makes it hard to spread on toast, it has a weird mouth feel, and the chunks often float to the top of the jar… I don’t know, I just don’t like it. But, I also, don’t love jelly. It takes longer to make, its super thin, I don’t think it’s as flavorful. So, I just blend my fruit, to just about smooth. Kind of a half way between a jelly and a jam – a Jellam!

This recipe would work for those leftover strawberries and cherries in your fridge, that didn't get eaten at their peak and their just not that appealing to pop in your mouth as a snack. This jellam ended up being sweet concoction of fresh fruit goodness.