Remember all those lemons I didn’t know what to do with? Well, I decided to punt. I deferred my decision. I froze my assets, if you will.
More specifically I froze the zest and the juice.
To freeze lemon zest:
- use a microplane for fine zest or a peeler to take off strips of zest (avoid the white pith).
- Place in a ziptop freezer bag and stash in your freezer.
To freeze fresh lemon juice:
- Juice all of your lemons. Put juice into an ice cube tray and stash in the freezer.
- Once cubes are frozen (a couple of hours later), remove from ice cube tray and keep in a ziptop freezer bag.
Kept frozen in airtight bags, both zest and the juice will keep for months. Which means I can space out my lemon-goodness instead of trying to use it all up in one big batch. (Note: Squeeze as much of the air out of the bags as you can before closing them)
And now I have a bag of lemon zest and cubes of lemon juice in the freezer to be used later when I feel like making:
- lemon bars
- fancy lemonade
- lemon curd
- lemon custard cakes
- blueberry scones with a little lemon zest for brightness
- or any other lemony treat.
Bonus tip: put a couple of the zested and juiced lemon “shells” down the garbage disposal to freshen things up down there.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Novel idea! Our neighbor always bring us a dozen or so lemons from their tree in AZ. Just this morning I put lemon zest in my plain Greek yogurt and it really kicked up the flavor! Thanks!
What a great idea. Definitely would save me a couple mad dashes to the store!
Brilliant! I love it. I think I just threw out a few lemons because I didn’t get around to using them in time. Next time, I’ll try this.
Thanks! Excellent ideas! I’m all about new ideas. I’m also going to try to lemon zest in my yogurt!