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Green tomato marmalade turns hard, unripe tomatoes into a bright citrus preserve with real orange and lemon peel in every spoonful. It sets on its own with no boxed pectin, and it tastes like orange marmalade with a tart green edge that citrus alone doesn’t give you.
Table of Contents
- Notes from My Kitchen
- A Quick Look at the Recipe
- Ingredients for Green Tomato Marmalade
- Substitutions and Low Sugar Options
- How to Make Green Tomato Marmalade
- Canning Green Tomato Marmalade
- Altitude Adjustments
- Setting Notes
- Ways to Use Green Tomato Marmalade
- Storage and Shelf Life
- More Ways to Preserve Green Tomatoes
- Yield Notes
- Green Tomato Marmalade FAQs
- Green Tomato Canning Recipes
- Green Tomato Marmalade Recipe
- Marmalade Recipes
This recipe has been reviewed for safety and accuracy by a Master Food Preserver certified through the University of Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Every fall I come in from the garden with more green tomatoes than I know what to do with. The early frost date here in Vermont doesn’t care how many are still hard on the vine. So I pick them all, and I start working through my green tomato canning recipes.
Green tomato marmalade is one of the older ones. It shows up in British and Canadian preserving books, and in American community cookbooks going back generations. The shape is always about the same. Green tomatoes, a whole orange, a whole lemon, and sugar, left to sit overnight before any of it sees the stove.
It’s a close cousin to my green tomato jam, and the citrus is what separates them. The jam gets one lemon, chopped fine enough to disappear. This one gets a whole orange and a whole lemon, sliced into thin quarter moons that stay visible in the jar. That’s what makes it a marmalade.
There’s no boxed pectin in it. Green tomatoes are firm and unripe, when a fruit has the most pectin, and the citrus peel adds more. The pot cooks down to the gel stage the same way any jam without added pectin does. It belongs with the citrus marmalade recipes I make in February. This one just happens in October.
If you’d rather put the tomatoes up whole, there’s canning green tomatoes. If you want something savory, green tomato salsa verde and green tomato chutney both use a bucketful. For fresh eating, I have a long list of green tomato recipes that are meals, baked goods, and more.
Notes from My Kitchen
Green tomatoes were one of the most popular ingredients in canning recipes from the early 1900’s, but they’re much less common today. I’m working through dozens of old-fashioned recipes, updating them for modern kitchens (and safety standards).
What surprises me is how good they all taste, and how much the flavor of green tomatoes really makes a recipe sing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a savory southern green tomato chow chow or a sweet green tomato preserve. They’re all absolutely delicious!
A Quick Look at the Recipe
- Recipe Name: Green Tomato Marmalade
- Recipe Type: Marmalade (no added pectin)
- Canning Method: Water Bath Canning
- Prep Time: About 20 minutes, plus an overnight soak
- Cook Time: About 30 minutes
- Canning Time: 10 minutes for half pints
- Yield: 3 half pints
- Jar Sizes: Quarter pints or half pints
- Headspace: 1/4 inch
- Ingredients Overview: Green tomatoes, sugar, orange, lemon
- Safe Canning Recipe Source: Follows NCHFP guidance for jams and jellies
- Difficulty: Easy
- Similar Recipes: This works like the other fruit marmalades that set without added pectin, such as apple marmalade and strawberry marmalade. If you have a bucket of green tomatoes to work through, try green tomato jam or green tomato pie filling.
Ingredients for Green Tomato Marmalade
The ingredient list is short, which is the way a marmalade should be made. Just what’s nessisary, and nothing that’s not.
- Green tomatoes: Hard, unripe tomatoes, the ones that were never going to ripen anyway. Any variety works and size doesn’t matter, since everything gets sliced thin. Set aside anything with soft spots or a blush of color, because a tomato that has started to turn has more water in it and less pectin. Don’t peel them. Green tomato skins stay tender in the jar, and you don’t peel unripe tomatoes for canning the way you do regular tomatoes.
- Sugar: Plain granulated white sugar. It sweetens, pulls the juice out of the fruit overnight, and helps set the marmalade. It isn’t the preservative, so you can adjust the amount, but less sugar means a longer cook and a softer set.
- Orange: A whole orange, peel and all, sliced thin and cut into quarter moons. Navel is what I use. The peel is where the marmalade character comes from, and it brings pectin and acid at the same time.
- Lemon: A whole lemon, treated the same way. Lemon is sharper than orange, and it keeps the jar from tasting flat. If your lemon is waxed, soak it in very hot water for a few minutes, then wipe off the wax before you slice it.
Slice the citrus as thinly as you can. A sharp knife is fine, a mandoline slicer is faster, and thin slices are what make the peel tender instead of chewy. Use a wide, heavy-bottomed pot to cook, because a small batch of thickening marmalade will scorch the second you stop stirring.
Substitutions and Low Sugar Options
You can swap the citrus as long as the count doesn’t decrease. Two oranges instead of an orange and a lemon makes a sweeter, rounder marmalade. A lime in place of the lemon is sharper, and Meyer lemons give you softer peel and less bitterness. What doesn’t change is the count. Two pounds of green tomatoes get at least two whole citrus fruits, because that’s where the acid and most of the pectin come from.
You can cut the sugar, and plenty of people do. Expect a longer cook, a softer set, and fewer jars, since sugar adds volume to the pot. Don’t cut the sugar more than 1/3 without adding a low-sugar pectin.
For a truly low-sugar marmalade that still sets firmly, use Pomona’s Universal Pectin instead of cooking to the gel stage. My guide to using Pomona’s pectin walks through it.
How to Make Green Tomato Marmalade
This is a two-day recipe, but only barely. Slice and sugar the tomatoes the night before, then cook for about half an hour the next morning. The ratio is 8 cups sliced green tomatoes to 3 cups sugar, plus one whole orange and one whole lemon.
If you’re working by weight, that’s 2 pounds green tomatoes to 1 1/2 pounds sugar.
Core the tomatoes and cut them in half, then lay the halves flat and slice them into thin half moons (or half moons with small tomatoes). Trim the ends off the orange and lemon, quarter them lengthwise, and remove the seeds. Slice the quarters as thin as you can, peel still on, to get little quarter moons.
Put it all in a large bowl with the sugar and stir until the fruit is coated. Cover it and leave it overnight, on the counter or in the fridge. An hour will do in a pinch, but overnight is better.
By morning, the sugar has drawn out enough juice that the whole bowl sits in syrup.
Scrape the bowl into a wide, heavy-bottomed pot, syrup and all, and bring it to a boil over medium-high heat. Then boil it hard, stirring most of the time, until it reaches the gel stage. That takes about 30 minutes. The tomato slices turn translucent and the syrup goes from thin and cloudy to thick and glossy, and that’s the change to watch for.
Check it at 220 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, or use the frozen plate test. Pull the pot off the heat, skim any foam, and jar the marmalade while it’s still hot.
Canning Green Tomato Marmalade
Fill and heat your water bath canner before you start cooking. The marmalade is done long before a full canner comes up to a boil. Wash the jars, keep them warm, and set the lids, rings, canning funnel, and jar lifter within reach.
Ladle the hot marmalade into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Run a bubble tool around the inside of each jar and top up the headspace if needed. Wipe the rims clean before the lids go on. A sticky rim is the most common reason a jar of preserves doesn’t seal. Screw the bands down to fingertip tight.
Lower the jars into the canner until they are under at least an inch of water. Process quarter pints or half pints for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner, adjusting for altitude. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, and let the jars sit another 5 minutes before lifting them out. That rest keeps the marmalade from siphoning out from under the lids.
Cool them on a towel for 12 to 24 hours, undisturbed, before you check the seals.
Altitude Adjustments
For water bath canning, processing times increase at higher elevations:
- 0 to 6,000 feet: 10 minutes
- Above 6,000 feet: 15 minutes
Setting Notes
Marmalade sets as it cools, not in the pot. Hot marmalade is always runny, so don’t judge this one by what goes into the jars.
Give it a full 24 to 48 hours before you decide anything. What you want is a soft, spreadable set with tender slices of peel suspended in it, not something that stands up on a spoon.
The gel stage is 220 degrees F at sea level, and it drops about 1 degree for every 500 feet you go up. At 2,500 feet, you’re looking for roughly 215 degrees F.
If you’d rather not trust a thermometer, keep two small plates in the freezer. Drop a spoonful onto a cold plate, put it back in the freezer for a minute, then push the edge with a fingertip. If it wrinkles, it’s done.
If it still hasn’t set after two days, you probably pulled it off the heat too early. My guide to troubleshooting jelly set covers how to recook it. You can also call it green tomato syrup and put it on pancakes. Nobody here has ever complained about that.
Ways to Use Green Tomato Marmalade
Toast and good butter, first, the same as any marmalade. It’s especially good on something salty, like an English muffin or a biscuit, where the bitterness has something to push against.
It does more on a cheese board than most preserves do. Put it next to a sharp cheddar or a young goat cheese. It’s also good spooned over baked brie with a few toasted nuts.
Warmed with a splash of vinegar, it glazes pork or chicken, and that’s where a lot of my jars go. Green tomatoes taste savory enough for that in a way a straight citrus marmalade doesn’t.
This past holiday season, I added it to my charcuterie board alongside local cheese, pickled pears, pickled green tomatoes, cranberry orange marmalade, Italian green tomato preserves, pickled carrots and pickled peppers.
Storage and Shelf Life
After 12 to 24 hours, press the center of each lid. A sealed lid is firm and slightly concave, and it won’t flex under your finger.
Take the rings off before you put the jars away. A ring left on can hold a failed lid down and hide a jar that never sealed. Wipe the jars, label them with the date, and store them somewhere cool, dark, and dry. Sealed marmalade holds its quality for 12 to 18 months, and the color deepens from green toward amber over that time, which is normal.
If a jar doesn’t seal, put it in the fridge and eat it within a week or two. If you catch it within 24 hours, you can reprocess it with a fresh lid. Once a jar is open, keep it in the fridge and use it within 1 to 2 weeks.
You don’t have to can it at all with a batch this size. It keeps a few weeks in the fridge, or up to 6 months in the freezer. Use straight-sided, freezer-safe jars, since a shouldered jar can crack as the marmalade expands against the shoulder, and leave 1 inch of headspace.
More Ways to Preserve Green Tomatoes
The sweet side of the green tomato shelf is small, and it’s good. Green tomato jam is the closest thing to this one, with a single lemon chopped fine instead of whole citrus. Green tomato pie filling is the other sweet one, and it bakes up a lot like a tart apple pie.
Most green tomato recipes go the other direction. Pickled green tomatoes are the classic. Southern chow chow and green tomato piccalilli are the old relishes, and green tomato ketchup is worth a batch if you’ve never had it. The rest of the unripe harvest can go into plain tomato canning recipes once it ripens on the counter.
Yield Notes
Two pounds of green tomatoes as picked came out to 8 cups once they were cored and sliced into thin half moons. That gave me 3 half pints. Your count can shift by a partial jar, depending on how juicy the tomatoes are and how far you cook it down. Wash a fourth jar before you start. A longer cook means a firmer marmalade and less of it.
This halves cleanly, and it doubles without much trouble, about 6 half pints from 4 pounds of tomatoes. Add a few minutes of boiling at the larger volume. Don’t go past double. A deep pot takes so long to reach the gel stage that the fruit overcooks before it sets.
Green Tomato Marmalade FAQs
Peel, pectin, and the overnight soak are what come up most on a marmalade like this one.
The citrus peel. A marmalade has whole slices of citrus in it, peel and all, and that is where the bitterness and the texture come from. My green tomato jam uses one lemon chopped small enough to disappear into the jam, and this one uses a whole orange and a whole lemon sliced into quarter moons you can see in the jar.
No. Green tomatoes are firm and unripe, which is when a fruit has the most pectin in it, and the citrus peel adds more. Cooking to 220 degrees F is what sets it, and no boxed pectin goes in.
The most common reasons are pulling it off the heat before it reached the gel stage, cutting the sugar back a long way, or scaling the batch up too far. Give it 24 to 48 hours to finish setting, and if it still hasn’t, read through my guide on troubleshooting jelly set.
You can shorten it to an hour, but don’t skip it. The sugar needs time to pull the juice out of the tomatoes, and that syrup is what the marmalade cooks down from. Without it you’re adding water to the pot instead, and it takes much longer to reach the gel stage.
You can. The sugar handles sweetness, set, and yield here rather than preservation, since the acidity of the tomatoes and the citrus is what makes it safe to water bath can. Cutting it means a longer cook, a softer set, and fewer jars. For a true low-sugar version that still sets firmly, use Pomona’s pectin instead.
Green Tomato Canning Recipes
There’s a lot more than marmalade to do with a bucket of unripe tomatoes.
If you tried this Green Tomato Marmalade recipe, or any other recipe on Creative Canning, leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know what you think in the 📝 comments below!
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Green Tomato Marmalade
Equipment
- Canning Jars, Lids and Bands
Ingredients
- 2 lbs green tomatoes, cored and thinly sliced, see notes
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 1 orange, thinly sliced and quartered, peel on
- 1 lemon, thinly sliced and quartered, peel on
Instructions
- Core the green tomatoes, cut them in half, lay the halves flat, and slice them into thin half moons.
- Trim the ends off the orange and the lemon, quarter them lengthwise, and pull out the seeds.
- Slice the citrus quarters as thin as you can, peel and all, into small quarter moons.
- Combine the tomatoes, orange, lemon, and sugar in a large bowl and stir until the fruit is coated.
- Cover the bowl and leave it overnight, on the counter or in the fridge, until the fruit is sitting in syrup. An hour is the minimum.
- Prepare a water bath canner, jars, and lids, and keep the jars hot until you fill them.
- Scrape the fruit and all of its syrup into a wide, heavy-bottomed pot and bring it to a boil over medium high heat.
- Boil hard, stirring most of the time, until the tomato slices turn translucent and the syrup is thick and glossy, about 30 minutes.
- Test for the gel stage at 220 degrees F, or until a spoonful wrinkles on a frozen plate.
- Remove the pot from the heat and skim off any foam.
- Ladle the hot marmalade into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles, adjust the headspace, and wipe the rims clean.
- Center the lids on the jars and screw the bands down to fingertip tight.
- Process quarter pints and half pints in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude (see notes).
- Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, and wait 5 minutes before lifting the jars out onto a towel.
- Cool 12 to 24 hours, check the seals, take the bands off, and store in a cool, dark place.
Notes
- 0 to 6,000 feet: 10 minutes
- Above 6,000 feet: 15 minutes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Looking for another jar to put up this week? Here are more marmalade recipes, and the rest of my water bath canning recipes if you have the canner out anyway.
Marmalade Recipes
Most of the rest are citrus, and they all set the same way.
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