I do I do I doo-ooooh!
Are the 90s really back already? Nickelodeon has embraced it, Netflix is in on it, girls on the street are dressed to audition for The Real World's first season, and now there is orange soda in my kitchen. I'm not complaining, the 90's are the first decade I have real nostalgia for, but it does kind of feel like it's too soon, right?
Except for the orange soda part, obviously, because when I can turn a million pounds of fresh oranges gifted to me straight off a tree into a super easy, simple syrup and then turn that into delicious homemade soda? It's never too soon for that. I will complain about the actual carrying the oranges part, though. It wasn't really a million pounds of citrus, of course, but it was at least 20, I'm sure.
Anyway, after I neglectfully let about half of my orange bounty grow sad and moldy, I rescued the remaining survivors and promptly zested and juiced them, then added some sugar and tarted them up a bit with citric acid. The result is a syrup that combines with sparkling water or club soda into a not-too sweet, just sour enough orange soda straight out of my Orangina dreams. Sunkist this is not.
It might not be exactly what Kel went into rapture over, but it does go excellently with re-runs of Guts and Legends of the Hidden Temple.
Homemade Orange Soda
Adapted from Serious Eats
zest from 2 oranges
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (from 1-2 oranges)
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/4 tsp citric acid
club soda or seltzer
- Combine orange zest and juice in a small pot with the sugar, water, and citric acid and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool completely.
- To make soda, mix 1 part syrup with 3 parts club soda or seltzer.