You might start seeing weird little oranges popping up in the grocery stores and produce markets with labels like “sour oranges”, “Seville oranges”, or even “bitter oranges”. You might wonder to yourself what these might be for, or who would want sour or even bitter oranges.
You do. Get them.
Get a lot of them.
Buy them all.
And then buy some more for me. Please. I’m good for it.
Sour oranges are in season usually somewhere between November and February at some point, with some being grown in Florida, parts of the Caribbean and, probably most renowned, Spain (hence their “Seville orange” moniker). They’re not the prettiest citrus you’ve ever seen—where most of its family members found at our local grocery stores are smooth skinned and high glossed, these are bumpy, uneven, and almost matte-finished—but it’s what’s inside that counts. They’re like nothing you’ve ever tasted. Their juice gives you no room to wonder where the name “sour orange” comes from—it’s the pure, clean taste of an orange, but replace all the sweetness you would usually expect with absolute sourness. Think the sourness of a lime, amplified. The peel is something else all together. In addition to the perfume of a sweet orange rind, it has an almost spiced quality with floral notes reminiscent of lavender.
Before I had ever tasted a sour orange on its own I read that, this Lavender Connection, and thought it strange, almost unbelievable—like the review or vignette of some wine or other foodstuff written by a highfalutin critic, identifying flavor profiles so obscure that you deem them as either completely mad or totally genius, and cause you to wonder just how lazy your taste buds really are—but it’s true. It was nothing intense or soapy by any stretch, but the floral aroma of dried lavender, soft and herbaceous, was palatable. But I don’t want to harp. Moreover, it has a phenomenal orange taste. Just think marmalade—the most common use for these, by far, is to make marmalade.
But these diamonds in the rough deserve more than just the standard treatment of being jellied, and since I’ve been on a bit of a crème brûlée kick lately the choice was obvious. It really is the perfect vehicle for something like this; with such a lip-puckering sourness it needs something sweet to balance it, not to mention some richness to give it a little depth. Then there’s the caramelized and crackly top, a little rough like the fruit’s skin, smoky and sweet with a touch of bitterness from the darker spots that verge on burnt.
It’s almost as though Fate decided long ago that the pomelo and mandarin should meet (they’d make a great couple and they have so much in common) because one day some French genius is going to concoct a baked custard, luxuriously creamy but still light as air, with a layer of burnished and bronzed sugar atop, so the fruit of the of those citruses’ lineage (get it?) would one day find each other. Then, oh then, it would be culinary nirvana.
Crème brûlée can seem intimidating, but don’t go there. It’s incredibly simple so, as most things that rely so heavily on their simplicity, everything has to be just so. I’ve tried a lot of crème brûlée recipes over the years and most of them turn out either like pudding—too dense—or like a classic baked custard—too eggy and “snappy”. This, if I may say so, is the perfect crème brûlée recipe. Loosely based on the classic recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, it has what some might consider a ridiculous amount of egg yolks, but they’re absolutely necessary. Trust me. A low baking temperature, adequate time to cool down, and a sprinkling of turbinado sugar over the top that you take a blow torch to and you’ve got a new classic.
The seasonality of sour oranges makes their presence fleeting for sure*, and while it’s sad to see them come and go so quickly their brief appearance only reinforces how special they truly are. So don’t waste any time; revel in them while you can, and even overindulge, to carry you through your next encounter.
Have you followed me on BLOGLOVIN’ yet? You should. Go do it.
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 6 | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | Passive Time |
| 30 - 35 minutes | 2 hours, 10 minutes |
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Seville oranges have a fragrant and floral rind with a lip-puckering sour juice. They bring such a balance and nuance to the classical French Créme Brûlée.
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- 3 cups heavy cream divided
- 9 tablespoons sugar (or 1/2 cup, plus 1 tablespoon)
- 10 egg yolks
- 1 heaping tablespoon Seville orange zest or sour orange (about 3 oranges)
- 3 tablespoons Seville orange juice
- Small pinch kosher salt
- Roughly 3 tablespoons turbinado sugar
- Preheat oven to 300° with an oven wrack in the middle position.
- Bring a kettleful (or medium saucepan) of water to a boil, then set aside.
- Combine 1 ½ cups of cream with the sugar in a medium saucepan. Add in the finely grated/zested peel of the Seville oranges into the pot—zesting them straight over the pot—and stir to combine. Place over medium heat, stirring occasionally, and bringing to a gentle bubble to dissolve the sugar—about 5 minutes.
- Once the cream has come to a bubble and sugar has dissolved pour in the remaining 1 ½ cups of heavy cream. Set aside to steep for about 10 minutes.
- Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl with a whisk until just combined and smooth. Once the cream has steeped pour about a generous ½ cup of the cream into the yolks, and whisk to combine. Do this once more before pouring in all the remaining cream along with 3 tablespoons of juice from the Seville oranges. Pour this through a fine mesh sieve into a large liquid measuring cup (1 to 1 ½ quarts).
- Lay a clean kitchen towel onto a roasting tray—it helps to keep the ramekins from sliding around once you pour in the water—and set six 4 to 5-ounce ramekins on it (mine measure about 5” diameter, 1” deep). Carefully pour the crème into each dish. Pull the oven wrack out, set the pan on it and, even more carefully still, pour the hot/recently boiled water into the roasting pan until it comes up about halfway up the sides of the ramekins, taking care not to splash any into the crème.
- Bake for about 25 – 30 minutes, until the crème has set but is still soft, with a slight wobble in the center (or read about 170° on an instant-read thermometer)
- Remove from the oven and set on a wire wrack to cool completely—about 2 hours. Move them to the fridge for at least 6 hours, or up to 3 days.
- Just before you’re ready to serve sprinkle each one with a t-spoon or so of the turbinado sugar and brulee them with a kitchen torch, making circular motions about an inch or two away from the surface. Serve immediately.
- Seville oranges are sour oranges from Seville, Spain. If you find other oranges marked as "Sour oranges" in your grocery store or market, those will do the trick!
- You can certainly make Créme Brûlée with regular oranges but it will be NOTHING like what it would be with sour oranges—there is simply no substitution for them (a combo of orange and lime gets you close with the juice, but the zest is irreplaceable).
* The grated rind, squeezed juice, and even whole fruit itself freeze beautifully. Juice should be strained, rind frozen in a single layer on a parchment or plastic wrap-lined sheet pan (or similar), and whole oranges double wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and then in a layer of heavy duty aluminum foil.