Freshly Juiced Lemons

I have enough lemon juice in my freezer to last at least a year now. We’ve had a hybrid citrus tree in our backyard for about 5 years. It hasn’t done much for us until this year. I’ve heard numerous times that citrus trees take a while to really produce anything worthwhile. Well, all of our dreams for this little (or not so little anymore) tree came true this year. As mentioned, the tree is a hybrid so we have key limes, meyer lemons, ponderosa lemons, and kumquats. We’ve gotten a few kumquats, and the ponderosa’s are plentiful, but not great yet. The key limes and meyer lemons made up for everything else this year. We had more meyers than I knew what to do with and I couldn’t let them go to waste like some did last year. So, I decided to make “lemon juice pellets” that I could freeze and use throughout the year. Here’s the process.

I washed all of my lemons thoroughly. I am estimating it was around 50-60 lemons. First I cut each end off. Then, I halved some of the lemons, quartered others. I juiced them using my Breville Juice Fountain. This produced several batches of beautiful and extremely fragrant lemon juice. I poured the juice into mini muffin pans and froze that for a few hours. After freezing, I popped out each pellet and filled freezer bags with them. Whenever I need lemon juice, I simply let a pellet melt, which only takes a few short minutes. I’ll also add that I left all of the rind on when I juiced them. The smell was incredible, this was beyond easy, and it’s so convenient to have lemon juice at the ready whenever I need it.

 

 

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