How do you make dried tangerine peel (chén pí 陈皮)? Or maybe the question is, why would you want to?
Here’s why: dried tangerine peel is one of the key aromatic ingredients in many Chinese dishes, like one of our favorites, Tangerine Beef. (I’ve compiled a more comprehensive list of recipes using dried tangerine peel at the end of this post, so definitely check that out.)
Dried Tangerine Peel: An Important Chinese Ingredient
Not only is dried tangerine peel used in traditional Chinese cooking, it’s also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). If you’re familiar with the TCM energy categories of warm (yang) and cool (yin), tangerine peels are in the warm category.
Judy occasionally refers to TCM and the medicinal properties of different foods in her recipes, and Sarah did get a real “taste” of TCM after she visited a traditional Chinese Medicine doctor in Beijing. You can read about her experience with TCM remedies here. Clearly, different generations have varying opinions when it comes to this stuff.
Easy to Make at Home Without Special Equipment
For me personally, I just like cooking with dried tangerine peel, and discovering how to make my own chen pi at home was a revelation! So the next time you have a mandarin orange, tangerine, or even a clementine lying around, remember this tutorial, and save those peels for the pantry.
Like herbs, tangerine peels become more pungent when dried. The color of the peel also gets darker with age. Some say that the value and flavor of dried mandarin orange peels increase with age, so don’t let the dark color of the aged tangerine peel turn you off!
Xinhui, a district of Jiangmen City in China’s Guangdong Province, is famous for making dried Xinhui mandarin orange peels. The mandarin oranges in Xinhui are green and quite sour when harvested for their peels.
I vaguely remember seeing the process in an episode of “A Bite of China,” which, by the way, is the best TV show out there on authentic Chinese food. I’m not sure what they did with the actual fruit, but the workers were hand-harvesting the peels and letting them dry out in the sun.
And that’s really all it takes. It’s a pretty simple process, and a gateway to a wide variety of recipes. Here’s how to do it.
Recipe Instructions
Lightly score the surface of the tangerine peel from the top of the fruit to about two thirds of the way down to the bottom. Make sure you don’t cut the fruit on the inside, or the juice will moisten the peels, which you don’t want. Basically, scoring makes peeling the tangerine easier. But depending upon the fruit you have, it may not even be necessary.
Start peeling from the top of the fruit from where the stem once protruded and peel the tangerine skin back in wedges like you would peel a banana. Once you get to the bottom, pull the entire tangerine skin away from the fruit. Set aside the fruit and enjoy it later.
Next, use a serrated knife to carefully scrape away most of the white pith on the inside of the peel. This will prevent your dried tangerine peels from being too bitter.
Place the scraped tangerine peels on a sheet pan and leave it in the sun to dry. A sunny window sill is fine, but a sunny spot outside is better, as long as it’s not too humid. Turn the peels once a day for 5 days, until completely dry. The time it takes may vary depending upon climate and weather. The dried peels must be be hard and crispy, or they may spoil. Store the dried peels in an airtight container––we like to use canning jars for this purpose.
For more info, dried tangerine peel is also listed on our Chinese Spices and Condiments page along with a host of other ingredients. Refer to that page and our Chinese Ingredients Glossary if you have questions about any of the ingredients used in our recipes.
Also enjoy our growing list of recipes that use this delightful ingredient. You can see that the list is pretty long, so go out and buy some tangerines and start drying!
Dishes using dried tangerine peels as a primary flavor:
Dishes using dried tangerine peels as a complementary flavor:
- Spiced Braised Beef Shank
- Braised Beef Noodle Soup
- Braised Pork Trotters with Soybeans
- Spicy Beef Noodle Soup
- Sour Plum Duck
- Lu Rou Fan
- Crispy Duck Wraps
- Coca Cola Chicken Wings
- Ma La Xiang Guo (Spicy Numbing Stir-Fry Pot)
- Roasted Braised Duck
- Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup
How to Make Dried Tangerine Peel
Ingredients
- 5 tangerines mandarin oranges, or clementines
- Sunshine
Instructions
- Lightly score the surface of the tangerine peel from the top of the fruit to about two thirds of the way down to the bottom. Make sure you don’t cut the fruit on the inside, or the juice will moisten the peels, which you don’t want. Basically, scoring makes peeling the tangerine easier. But depending upon the fruit you have, it may not even be necessary.
- Start peeling from the top of the fruit from where the stem once protruded and peel the tangerine skin back in wedges like you would peel a banana. Once you get to the bottom, pull the entire tangerine skin away from the fruit. Set aside the fruit and enjoy it later.
- Next, use a serrated knife to carefully scrape away most of the white pith on the inside of the peel. This will prevent your dried tangerine peels from being too bitter.
- Place the scraped tangerine peels on a sheet pan and leave it in the sun to dry. A sunny window sill is fine, but a sunny spot outside is better, as long as it’s not too humid. Turn the peels once a day for 5 days, until completely dry. The time it takes may vary depending upon climate and weather. The dried peels must be be hard and crispy, or they may spoil. Store the dried peels in an airtight container––we like to use canning jars for this purpose.
I saw your recipe for Orange Beef, and had to try making the dried peels myself. We have a tangerine tree that has never produced good fruit, and thought that maybe it could redeem itself with usable peels.
There were several of last season’s fruit on the tree, so that was my starting point. They didn’t require any cutting to peel. I flattened the peels, and used a vintage peach pitter to scrape the pith off. The tool is something like a slim, sharpened spoon, and was used when there were a lot of peaches to be canned. It worked very well for removing the pith.
To dehydrate, I used an electric oven. I figured that convection was the right method, since it exhausts the moisture from what’s in the oven. The lowest temp that the oven could be set to on convection is 170 F, so that’s what I used.
The peels were completely dessicated in 60 minutes. This worries me a bit, since dehydrating in the oven usually takes many hours. The taste of the dried peel is slightly (pleasantly, to me) bitter, with a tangerine flavor that persists for at least 30 minutes on my tongue.
I’ll be using these to make the Orange Beef in the near future.
Thanks for pointing me in this interesting direction.
Regards,
Joe
Hi Joew, sounds like you found a great use for those backyard tangerines :)
Love your family site! Two questions. (1) it is now approaching winter here. Can I dehydrate in the oven? I’ve never used the setting before. (2) my mom used to buy these (non-sugared) and we’d suck on them as a treat. Are these the same? Thanks!
Hi Jane, you can dehydrate tangerine peels in the oven. Just be patient and dry at low heat (less than 200 degrees F). As for the store-bought dried peels that are eaten as a snack, they are made from the thin skins of Chinese sour orange citrus grown specifically for the peels. The dried peels you buy in the store for cooking are from the same fruit.
I found that removal of the pith from the inner rind of the tangerine was more readily accomplished by scraping the pith side to side with tines of a fork and then removing residual pith by gently scraping with the edge of a regular knife.
What a fun site! I have so many dishes I look forward to cooking!
Hi Steve, thanks so much for sharing your personal tips with us and our readers!
I did not know they could be used in cooking. I just dry them as they are, grind them, add some boiling water, filter and use that water to scent the house. Or mix 1 to 1 with baking soda and using a wet cloth piece rub the area that cats pee on.
Hi Geo, so many uses for dried tangerine peels and I agree that they are wonderful in a pot of water on the stove for scenting the house.
Hi again Dear Bill,
What is the perfect hot oil temperature for deep fried whole squid ?
Hi Khalid, see Kaitlin’s recipe for Salt and pepper squid for the details ;-)
Thank you so much dear bill :)