Calamansi Sour Plum Juice 桔子酸梅汁

Let’s squeeze and Zest up!

Calamansi or Calamondin or Limau Kasturi (in Malay) or 桔子(in Chinese) is a hybrid of lime and orange belonging to the citrus family. Its size is much smaller than lime. Calamansi is best grown in warm weather and is widely found in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

One and a half year ago, at only RM5, I bought this Calamansi tree in a small pot from a nearby garden nursery and planted it in my vegetable garden. It grew healthily in the garden since then. However, it seemed like ages to see it flower and bear fruits. At the beginning of this year, my neighbour helped me to fertilise the plant with fertiliser that was supposed to encourage plants to flower. After this application, the plant still did not flower as much as we anticipated. It only produced a few flowers and I only managed to harvest one fruit at the end. L

I was kind of disappointed but nevertheless I continued watering it and twice a month applied normal poultry manure fertiliser. Finally, a month ago, we were overwhelmed to see it flowered and produced abundant fruits!  

Calamansi Tree life cycle

 While writing this post I did some research on Calamansi tree. Then only I realised Calamansi tree typically takes 2 years after planting to fruit. This fact, matched exactly with the timing of my tree, which has been nearly 2 years since I planted it.  It’s the time for it to flower and fruit.

 

Calamansi is one of the most common citrus used in Southeast Asian cuisines. In Malaysia, Calamansi (Limau Kasturi) juice is one of the key ingredients added in Sambal belacan and used in Nyonya Food. Other than using its acidity as a natural preservative additive to food, it is also great for making drinks.

Calamansi juice, as a drink, makes one of the best thirst-quenchers. It is best to consume during a heat wave. Even though Calamansi juice tastes acidic and sour but when consumed, they are alkalizing to the stomach, which helps in weight loss and detoxification.  Similar to its citrus family members, Calamansi is rich in vitamin C too and is great for skin whitening.

 Seeing the abundant fruits on the tree, I couldn’t wait to harvest them to make one of my favourite fruit juices which I often order when we dine out.  It’s called Calamansi sour plum juice.

Calamansi juice is one of the popular beverages that is easily available in Malaysia eatery shop.  It is very soothing to the throat, quench thirst and a great remedy for sore throat. This drink also helps digestion and is known for relieving the symptoms of gout.  So, if you happen to get them at your local veggie shop, do give them a squeeze and drink up! It’s a great substitute for lemonade!  

Calamansi Sour Plum Juice 桔子酸梅汁

Calamansi Juice Concentrate 桔子浓缩果汁

 After resuming the 9-5 working life, I hardly spent much time in taking care of my garden. However, my 5 years old calamansi tree never seems to fail me by continuing fruit abundantly.  Calamansi is Limau Kasturi in Malay or 桔子in Chinese.  We couldn’t seem to consume the fruits fast enough to cope with its ripening rate. Rather than letting them simply rot and went to waste, I had to harvest them and shared with neighbours and friends.

When I passed a bag of these little citrus fruits to my Sister-in-law who lives in Penang, she taught me a great way to preserve them into concentrated juice that can be kept in the fridge and can be easily consumed as and when we want. What I like most is, it is a very simple way to make. The recipe ratio for making this juice concentrate is 1:3, i.e. one part of juice and three parts of sugar. For my first attempt I used white sugar.  In my 2^nd batch I replaced white sugar with brown sugar instead as some claimed brown sugar is healthier than white sugar. If brown sugar is used, the colour of the juice concentrate becomes darker and looks like honey instead of light golden colour as shown below.

 

You can also check out my old post of Calamansi Sour Plum Juice, to learn how to make fresh Calamansi juice with Sour plum, another great thirst quenching beverage that you will yarn to have in the hot summer. Calamansi is a member of the citrus fruits family.  It is high in Ascorbic Acid or vitamin C content and best known for its healing effect to soothe the throat, a great natural cure for sore throat.

Now, at home my fridge is always ready with 1-2 bottles of this juice extract and by mixing 1 to 2 table spoons of the juice extract, we get to serve a glass of healthy soothing fruit juice with no artificial colouring and preservative, let’s cheer to that! J 

Calamansi Juice Concentrate   Ingredients:   Calamansi lime ( Limau Kasturi) juice – 1 bowl, Sugar – brown sugar or white sugar – 21/2 to 3 bowl (To your liking) Pasteurised bottle to store the juice   Method:   1.     Wash lime, halve the lime, remove seeds and squeeze juice out into a bowl. 2.     Measure sugar using the same size of bowl with ratio of 1:3 3.     Pour juice into pot, add in sugar and stir well and cook in low medium heat.   4.     Once the sugar fully melts into juice turn off heat and let it cool before bottle the juice and keep in fridge. Tips: Make sure no seed get into the juice else it made the juice turns bitter.   桔子浓缩果汁 主料： 桔子汁 1碗， 糖 - 红糖或白糖 -  21/2至3碗（随你喜好） 消毒瓶子 方法： 1.     清洗桔子，将桔子切一半，取出种子，将果汁挤出一碗。 2.     使用相同尺寸的碗，比例为1：3测量糖 3.     将果汁倒入锅中，加入糖并搅拌均匀，中低温煮至糖融化。 4.     一旦糖完全融化成浓缩果汁关闭火，让它冷却，然后瓶装进消毒瓶子 5.     并保存在冰箱里   温馨提示： 确保没有籽掉进果汁，它会使果汁变得苦涩。