This easy recipe uses the peel from blood oranges along with sugar to create a delicious no-cook syrup that you can use to zhuzh up everything from plain yogurt to sparkling water.

About Blood Oranges
Blood Oranges are reddy orange on the outside, with segments that range from pinky-orange to almost maroon. They’re a little bit sweeter than regular oranges, with some describing them as having raspberry notes.
Blood oranges are usually available from December to May in North America. If you aren’t able to find blood oranges, you could use other oranges to make this. We haven’t tried it yet, but a mix of lemon and orange would likely be quite awesome as well.
We adapted this recipe from Serious Eats, Fresh Lemon Syrup Recipe. While the process is identical, lemons are more acidic than blood oranges, so using lemons creates more syrup with less fruit.

Making the Syrup
This recipe only uses the rinds from the oranges. To use up the rest of the orange, you could either juice it and drink the juice, or make Blood Orange Breakfast Salad.
Once you have the orange rinds, put them in a glass or ceramic bowl and stir in the sugar. Let the rind/syrup mixture sit on the counter, stirring occasionally. After about 4 hours, strain the oranges in a large sieve, pressing them to get as much liquid out as possible. You can leave this for longer than 4 hours, up to about 8, but don’t leave it too long or it will taste bitter.


Using the Syrup
Recipe Card
No Cook Blood Orange Syrup
Ingredients
- 6 cups blood orange peels
- 1 cup white sugar (If vegan, check to ensure that the sugar is vegan.)
Instructions
- Toss the peels and sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Let sit on the counter, stirring occasionally, for about 4 hours, or up to about 8 hours. Using a fine sieve, strain out the peels, reserving the syrup. Makes a scant 1/2 cup of syrup.