Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Candied oranges are a classic confection brought to medieval Europe by the Arab conquest of southern Spain and Sicily. Aside from being a lavish treat—sugar was a luxury for most of history—the preparation serves as a way to preserve a perishable ingredient. Replacing the water in an ingredient like an orange with very concentrated sugar syrup inhibits bacterial growth. Traditionally, the technique of preparing candied, crystallized, or glacé fruit involves briefly poaching the ingredient in hot sugar syrup, then resting the ingredient to allow sugar to diffuse into the fruit. The process is repeated over days, weeks, or even months, depending on the size of the ingredient. At each step, the sugar syrup is concentrated slightly so that eventually the water in the fruit is entirely saturated with sugar.Our technique is a modern variation that is quick and far less sweet. The blood oranges—you can use other citrus, too—are blanched in salted water. The salt diffuses into the pith and masks its bitterness. The oranges are shocked until ice cold, which firms the rind so that it doesn’t crack during the vacuum infusion step. A chamber sealer is used to repeatedly vacuum-infuse a light sugar syrup into the pith. Finally, a sous vide cooking step softens the rind. Like a classic orange glacé, our half-candied blood oranges have an edible sweetened rind. But unlike the classic orange glacé, our half-candied blood oranges taste refreshingly juicy and tart inside.

Half-Candied Blood Orange