Canning Oranges with No Added Sugar

Did you know that when canning fruit as fruit (not jam), sugar plays no role in safety 😉 aka you can can fruit without adding sugar to your water. My mind was blown so I had to try it out. 

Color may change overtime - but you can help counteract that with a squirt of lemon juice or just be savage like me😉

My neighbor gifted us a bunch of Florida oranges that peel just like clementines do, so I figured they’d be the perfect place to test out this theory! 

For these oranges, I gathered all of the juice that they were sitting in and mixed that with filtered water to add back into their jars (aka natural sugar!)

In the past, I’ve done this with pineapples and it turned out amazing - with the pineapples, I boiled the rinds and cores and then used that water to fill my jars! It was DELICIOUS. There are all kinds of ways to get creative! 

Anyhoo - this was so easy (yet time consuming). We peeled, filled, poured and water bathed for 10 minutes. Something worth noting with oranges is that you must remove ALL of the white pieces off of your oranges or it will become bitter while it sits in the cans overtime (see, time consuming). 

I popped open a jar I canned months later and it wasn’t bad! No bitter or souring taste. I will say that I prefer freeze dried oranges because they hold their sweetness better, but I am counting this as a win!