Grapefruit Cordial
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I am always looking for ways to produce less waste when cooking or crafting drinks. An ongoing goal of mine is to become more sustainable and find ways to waste less. Since I only ever use fresh juice when making cocktails, I almost always have leftover rinds and juice that I can’t always find a purpose for.
One of my favorite ways to utilize old fruit and juice is to make either a shrub or a cordial.
You’ll need the following equipment:
Ingredients:
Grapefruit
I happen to have a grapefruit on hand that was a little past its prime, but a perfect candidate for grapefruit cordial.
The first step to making grapefruit cordial is to remove the entire peel from the fruit. My grapefruit is a bit soft, so I ended up taking off a lot of pith too. I do actually want to keep some of the pith on there for a little bitterness, but I don’t want this cordial to be overly bitter, so I’m just going to use a paring knife to remove most of it.
To do this most effectively, hold onto one side of the peel pith side up and shave the pith by shimmying your knife down.
Once you have completely removed the peel from the grapefruit, as well as removing most of the pith, transfer them into a plastic bag. You can also use a silicone reusable bag too, just make sure it seals completely. Using a digital scale, weigh the grapefruit peels.
Keeping the Bag of peels on the scale, tare the scale and out the equal weight is sugar to the bag.
Once the sugar has been added, make sure to remove all air from the bag and seal it tightly. Then massage all that sugar into the grapefruit peels. This is going to extract the oils to combine with the sugar to make oleo saccharum - which is also a great ingredient to have on hand for making drinks.
This process does take a while. I like to give it a good massage for a few minutes them set it aside to sit overnight at room temperature. You can already start to see a syrup forming by just massaging for a few minutes.
Next step is to juice the grapefruit. I like to do this over a fine mesh strainer to catch any pulp. Once I have extracted all the juice, I will add equal parts sugar by volume and add both the sugar and juice to a pot and whisk together to combine. Heat over low heat till the sugar dissolves, just like making a simple syrup.
Once the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat and let cool completely before transferring it into a jar and storing in the fridge.
The next day, your grapefruit oleo saccharum should be ready, and all or most of the sugar should be dissolved. If it isn’t, just give it a little massage to dissolve the rest of the sugar.
Now just squeeze the grapefruit oleo saccharum from the peels and add it to the grapefruit syrup.
Once everything is in the jar, just stir to combine and the grapefruit cordial is ready to use.
This cordial lasts for a few weeks in the fridge. I love to use this in cocktails and also like it stirred into yogurt or in drizzled over overnight oats. It’s really great to have on hand for non-alcoholic cocktails as well.
