Orange Curd
Buttery smooth, silky curd made with fresh orange juice and zest. You can use either navel, cara cara or blood orange to make this orange curd recipe.
Orange curd made perfectly smooth and buttery, bursting with citrus flavor. A little lemon adds a dot of tart to the otherwise sweet curd.
Recipe Ingredients to make Orange Curd
Oranges: This recipe is designed to work with either blood oranges, cara cara or your regular navel oranges. Each will give you a slightly different taste: navel your standard orange, cara cara will have a hint of berry, blood orange will taste berry like but also be a bit more tart.
Sugar: Fine granulated sugar.
Butter: Unsalted butter, no need to soften it, it’s best cold here.
Eggs: Large eggs.
Salt: A small pinch of fine sea salt to help break down the eggs and bring out the flavor of the curd.
Lemon: Just a bit of lemon juice to add an edge to an otherwise sweet curd (oranges are sweet!). If you want it more tart you can remove more of the orange juice to add more lemon. At more than 2 tablespoons of juice though, the lemon tends to dominate.
Starch: tapioca or cornstarch will do. We have a bit more juice in this recipe than our usual curds to get to the right taste so some starch will help us get the right consistency. I could have added another yolk but I saw no reason to break up one when starch does the job so efficiently.
How to make Orange Curd
As with most citrus curds, you’ll start by juicing and zesting your citrus.
I like to rub the zest into the sugar which helps bring out the flavor even more.
Eggs get whisked together separately, this helps break down the egg whites so that you don’t struggle as much with them once the curd is cooking.
It’s best to use a thermometer to help you check for doneness, at around 160 F the curd will start to thicken a bit. You can take it to 170 F for a properly thick curd (I stopped mine at 165 F).
Then you’ll pour it through a fine mesh sieve over the butter. The sieve will capture the zest and the little white egg bits that can sometimes form.
Incorporating cold butter slowly helps achieve that super silky, smooth texture.
FAQ & Troubleshooting
How long will this keep in the fridge?
Two weeks, longer if you store it in the freezer!
The curd isn’t thickening.
This has both eggs and starch in it and over medium heat will thicken, given the enough time. Be patient and keep watch over it – never walk away from a cooking curd for more than 30 seconds or it will over cook.
The curd has white bits in it/The curd is too thick
This happens when the curd is overcooked, bits of the egg turn white. There’s no real way to salvage an overcooked curd, you’ll be straining out the white bits anyway but if you find it overly thick and still want to use it for spreading over toast or something you can add a bit more orange juice to loosen it.
What to do with Orange Curd
Use it to spoon over a pavlova, or mini pavlovas along with whipped cream and some fresh fruit.
Smear it over toast.
Make an orange meringue tart (or pie).
Bake some orange curd stuffed cookies.
Make some orange curd bars, with a shortbread crust.
Make some chocolate ganache curd bars.
See also
Orange Curd Recipe
Orange Curd
Ingredients
- 65g or ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- Zest of 2 large navel or cara cara oranges or 3 blood oranges
- 3 large eggs
- 120g or ½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice navel, cara cara or blood orange
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 58g or 4 tablespoons butter cold and sliced
- Pinch fine sea salt
- 1 tablespoon tapioca or cornstarch
Method
- Slice the butter and place it into a bowl and set a fine mesh sieve over it. Set aside.
- Pour the sugar in a pot, and zest the oranges over the sugar. Use your fingers to rub the zest into the sugar until you feel it begin to release its oils and become like wet sand. Add the orange juice and lemon juice.
- Add the eggs and starch to the pot and whisk well to combine. Do your best to break up the egg bits. Set over medium low heat and begin cooking.
- Use a rubber spatula or wooden spoon to stir the curd as it cooks. You’ll keep stirring as it warms and thickens. It will thicken on the bottom first, keep stirring until it reaches about 165 F (it should cover the back of a spoon).
- Pour the thickened curd into the bowl through the sieve. Scrape it to get as much curd out as possible, and scrape the bottom of the sieve too.
- Stir until the butter fully melts into the curd and you have a runny, silky curd. Transfer to a heatproof jar and let come to room temperature. Then set it in the fridge to store.
- Curd will keep for about 2 weeks in the fridge.
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Easy, Perfect!
tastes fine, method bad. next time I will go with one that doesn’t use corn starch and that uses a double boiler instead of straight into the pot. didn’t get as silky smooth as I’d hoped
Wow, so I made this with mandarin juice to create a mandarin curd for some mandarin bars with a sesame crust for Lunar New Year. It was amazing. I did a 1/4 cup of sugar since mandarin juice is sweeter, 1/2 a cup of mandarin juice, and a tbsp of mandarin zest.
great recipe
Flipping delicious. I swirled this in french meringue cookies with a cranberry compote for Thanksgiving. Tart and light.
This is maybe the worst curd recipe I have ever used. I should have known as soon as I saw the recipe called for starch to thicken. Any curd recipe that doesn’t thicken on its own is a RED FLAG. This recipe is watery, use way too much zest, takes way longer than any curd should because you have to shift out all the zest and hope you are getting even a little curd out of it. And claiming it makes 2 cups? Even with the zest in, it was barely hitting the 1 cup line. A waste of ingredients, a waste of time. To anyone reading, PLEASE look for a different recipe.
Sorry to hear it didn’t work out for you Marianne. The starch is there because orange juice itself is not very acidic and has trouble thickening, and I didn’t want to add more egg yolks less the flavor become ‘eggy’. It sounds like you left out the starch and that’s why yours was watery. Zest is there to impart flavor, we take it out after it’s released the flavor so that we have a smooth curd.
I found this recipe when looking for something different to mix into my homemade greek yogurt. I was looking for an orange dreamcicle recipe but found this instead. I just scrape out two vanilla bean pods and drop the seeds and pods in with the sugar and zest. I’ll then add the rest of the ingredients together into a big cup and beat it all together to make sure the eggs are well incorporated and beaten before adding it to the pot. I’ll then whisk it a bit before I turn the heat on the stove on. I also heat to 170 F, because that is what every other citrus curd recipe I make says to heat to. It turns out wonderfully every time I’ve made it.
Hi Sam. I have made your Lime curd, a have now made this one. Yummy! Loved it too. I would like to make bulk amounts of this for gifts and selling, but I wondered how long the shelf life would be? I also have a large amount of Blood Oranges at the moment, and would really love to make this. I would also like to thank Sydney Rubin for his suggestion about the food colouring, as the Blood Orange’s made the curd a very dull colour.
Can you freeze the orange curd?
you can! Keep it in an airtight container, it’ll last a few months.
I noticed you didn’t say when to add the salt in the process? Did I miss something?
I’ve made this twice without the salt and it seems perfect!
I made this tonight as a filling for cupcakes. It’s delicious.
It is SO hard not to just eat this with a spoon.
=) =) i totally agree
I made this, instead of putting all of it in a pot, I made it in a double boiler as I worry about egg curdling being on such direct heat. It worked great and the recipe otherwise was unchanged!
using a double boiler, especially for an orange curd which is prone to curdling unlike lemon or lime, is an excellent idea
I only used egg yolks when I made this recipe. I was looking for a thick curd to fill my carrot cake. After cooling, this set up perfectly for my cake. Thanks for the recipe!
Thanks for your reply, Sam.
The trees are probably the rattiest citrus trees that you’ve ever had the misfortune to behold: bark is falling off, constantly sprouting suckers, etc. But, 3 out of the 5 (2 oranges and a Meyer lemon) produce superior fruit. Even though they should have been dead decades ago. We’ve lived here for about 30 years, and every year we say “they will succumb this year”. Still haven’t, though.
I like the fact that you’ve removed the stray yolk from the recipe. It’s always so exasperating to have that 1 (or more!) lonely egg white sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to go bad and be composted. Never can figure out what to do with them. And DO NOT suggest egg white omelets. I’d rather eat styrofoam.
Joe
Hi, Sam.
Several comments have mentioned that the orange curd isn’t quite as thick as they would like.
In your post, you say:
“Eggs: Large eggs and a yolk. The extra yolk is to help along the thickening of the curd.”
On the recipe card, neither the ingredients nor the instructions mention the extra yolk. Could that be the reason for the lack of thickness?
I will be making this as soon as the front yard oranges are ripe.
Thanks,
Joe
Hi Joe, jealous of those trees you’ve got! When I updated the recipe card a few months ago (after getting the too thin feedback) I removed the yolk and added more starch, that gave me the thickness you see pictured. I just removed it from the text now – thank you for the note.
Easy peasy and delicious!! I made a double batch, I followed the instructions and it came out exactly like it was supposed to. Would make this again in a heartbeat!
This orange curd is amazing! Tastes just like an orange creamsicle. I cooked the curd to 170 deg F and similar to the last comment it is a bit runnier than other curds I’ve made. Still very delicious!
Ana, so glad you liked it! I’m going to remake this soon and see if I can thicken it up a bit – appreciate your feedback !
This curd is delicious, but I did have a couple of issues. Cooked for 20 minutes and still only got up to 165 degrees when I called it. Still very usable, but I like my curd a little thicker than this. Also, I used blood oranges that were a darker red/brown color inside and the finished curd had an unappetizing pale brown color. I decided to mix in a single drop of red gel food color and it turned a really pleasant reddish/pink color. Just something to keep in mind.