Zesting and juicing a lemon (or any citrus fruit) is easy if you have the right tools. Just follow these steps.
Many recipes call for the juice and/or zest of a lemon. There are various tools you can use to do this, but we like using a zester and manual squeezer, shown below.
Lemon juice adds a lovely sharpness to both sweet and savoury dishes, and is less harsh in sourness than vinegar. Lemon zest is one of our favourite flavour kicks. It’s the very outer peel of the lemon, and has a slight bitterness as well as a strong lemon flavour due to the oils in the skin. It’s normally used shredded fine in pastries and sauces, but can lend a nice zing to many dishes.
For juicing, there are various tools you can buy – such as hand held reamers, presses and electric gadgets – but we like a basic hand squeezer. The key is to choose one with a nice pointy top and sharp fins. For zesting you can grate the skin on a medium to fine grater, but an actual zester does a much better job and avoids getting too much pith in your zest.
Jake sticks his nose in
If you are juicing it doesn’t really matter what lemons you buy, but for zesting is has to be UNWAXED lemons
Zesting
Hold the unwaxed lemon over a small bowl or mug and scrape the sharp side of the zester over the peel. You have to be firm and work in long strokes down the length of the lemon, working around it until all the peel is removed and you have nice long strips of zest.
For a garnish the zest can be left long, but for most recipes it needs to be chopped fine – zest can have quite a hard texture so you don’t want big strands in your dishes. We find it easiest to chop in the bowl or mug with scissors.
Juicing
Juicing is even simpler. Just cut your lemon in half across the middle, and remove any obvious pips. If you are using the squeezer we recommend, don’t worry too much about this as the lid with catch any other pips as you juice.
Jake sticks his nose in
For cutting lemons, a serrated knife is best, but any sharp knife will do
Now place each half of the lemon in turn on top of the juicer and twist firmly down onto the spike. The juice will collect in the bottom container. Your lemon is done!
If you don’t have a juicing tool you can always just squeeze the lemon by hand – press each half firmly over a small bowl. Just be mindful to remove any pips before using.
Jake sticks his nose in
These techniques for zesting and juicing can be used on any citrus fruit, e.g. limes and oranges