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What To Do With Homegrown Lemons? Freezing, Storing, and Preserving
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Feb 20, 2024
What do you do if you find yourself with a ton of homegrown lemons? You can make lemonade, yes - but in this video, I show my favorite ways to store lemons for long-term use. After waiting for your lemon harvest all year, use these tips to save every scrap of precious lemon! Thanks for watching! RECIPES: Whole Lemon Yogurt Breakfast Cake https://thefruitgrove.com/whole-lemon-yogurt-breakfast-cake/ Easy Lemon Muffins with Pistachio-Lemon Streusel https://thefruitgrove.com/easy-lemon-muffins-with-pistachio-lemon-streusel/ Harvest Salad with Green Apples and Meyer Lemon-Tahini Dressing https://thefruitgrove.com/harvest-salad-with-green-apples-and-meyer-lemon-tahini-dressing/ LEARN MORE: How to prune potted lemon trees: https://youtu.be/4uuHySXtXto More ways to freeze lemons: https://thefruitgrove.com/5-ways-to-freeze-lemons-make-your-harvest-last-for-months/
View Video Transcript
0:00
I just recently harvested the lemons off of my potted Meyer lemon tree and I was really happy
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with the harvest. These are the biggest juiciest lemons I could have possibly hoped to grow myself
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So today I wanted to show you my favorite ways to store and freeze and preserve my lemon harvest
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to keep that fresh pick taste for as long as possible. So I'm growing my Meyer lemon tree in a container because it's just a little too cold in my area to
0:28
plant one in the ground and with that it's only a couple years old and I was really really happy
0:34
with how many lemons I got. I got about 20 lemons this year. They were all big and just glorious
0:39
Now this is not 20 lemons here. This is what I have left because I've already used a lot of my
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lemon harvest to make many many tasty things. But today I wanted to take a little break from that
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but today I wanted to take these last few lemons and preserve some and freeze some and just store
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them long term so that I can keep using them for the next several months. There's a lot of great
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ways to do this. These are just the ones that I have found to be the most useful in my kitchen
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So my goal is to use every scrap of these precious lemons. So the first step is to wash them really
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really well. Now since I grew these myself I know I didn't spray anything harmful on them
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or there's nothing that I need to worry about. There's no coating or anything like that. There
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haven't been a bunch of people handling them in a grocery store. So for me it was as simple as
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taking a produce brush and just running them under some cold water and giving them a light scrub
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If you're using store-bought lemons I would suggest using some vinegar water. So put the
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lemons in a bowl and top it off with water and I don't know maybe like a half a cup of vinegar
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quarter cup something like that. Swish it around let it sit for a bit and then rinse and scrub the
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lemons like I mentioned before. Now whatever way you use to wash them be sure that you dry them
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completely. So I like to towel dry them first and then let them sit out to air dry the rest of the
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way. Because any way you store them it's going to be better to remove that outer moisture. They're
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going to last longer. So this is the way I store my lemons short term. These have been in my fridge
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for I don't know two to three weeks already and they're going strong. Just washed, dried, put in a
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ziplock bag and I take as much air out as possible and keep them in my fridge. Bonus if you keep them
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in a crisper drawer they're going to last longer. But the key is air is really the enemy here
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Because even though it seems like the rind of a lemon is strong and sturdy a lot of moisture
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evaporates through the rind. So whether you're storing them in the fridge or when we talk about
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freezing them you want to keep air away. I just so happen to have an example of what happens if you
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don't keep your your citrus fruit in some kind of bag or container. Because this is not a prop
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for this video. This is just something that I found in my fridge because you know life and I
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don't do everything perfectly. So let me show you. Okay so these are some limes that have been in my
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fridge for a few weeks probably about as long as these lemons maybe a little bit longer and they
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just look terrible. They're just drying out this one especially they're turning brown
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they're wrinkly. The inside the juice may be viable for a little bit longer but like you don't want
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your homegrown lemons to end up looking like this. So keep them in a bag or jar or something to keep
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the air away. Okay so now let's talk about freezing. I like to freeze. There are a lot of different ways
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you can do this. I like to do a few different things so that way I have lemons in different forms
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that I can use for all sorts of recipes. So first of all my first favorite way to freeze lemons is
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just like this whole in a freezer bag. If you have like a vacuum seal kind of bag that would be even
3:54
better but just keeping them whole. You can freeze them whole and as long again as long as they're
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airtight they're going to keep for several months this way. And then you can just cut them up frozen
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and throw them in whatever you want to do. You can grate them frozen into different recipes
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A great thing to do with frozen lemons that you've kept is to make my whole lemon breakfast cake
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So I will link to that but yeah this is that's all you need to do. It's as simple as that
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An extra step would be to wrap each lemon in plastic wrap so that again they're sort of
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double protected from the air. That may help them to last a little bit longer. The next way
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that I like to freeze lemons is simply by taking them apart a little bit. So I want to zest the
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lemon and then still freeze the rest of the lemon. So two ways I like to hang on to my lemon zest
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First I'll use a microplane to go ahead and zest it in smaller pieces to use in recipes and then
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I'll dehydrate them in the oven or you can use a food dehydrator and just keep them in my pantry
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It's really really simple. I also like to use a vegetable peeler to peel off the rind in bigger strips and then you can
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freeze that in a freezer bag and I'll pull that out and you can chop it up and use it for recipes
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or I've used it to make lemoncello which is a lot of fun. I highly recommend that. So that way the
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zest is still usable and then what I do is I take the rest of the lemon that is now rindless. I'll
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peel off as much of the white pith as I can with a paring knife and then wrap them in plastic wrap
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and then just freeze them whole. So again I've got those whole lemons that I can use for all
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kinds of things and they're great for juicing once they're defrosted. Another thing I like to do once
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I've zested a lemon especially instead of just wrapping it up and freezing it whole I will cut
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it open and go ahead and juice it and put it in an ice cube tray. That way I've got it for whatever
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recipes or cocktails or whatever I need it for. I love these Meyer lemons. They're a blend of a
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lemon and a tangerine so they're a little sweeter a little milder and I think they translate well
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to just about any recipe. I love having them on hand. I told you it was juicy. I'm telling you
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homegrown lemons is the way to go. So the last way I like to freeze them is just in slices. I like having these lemon slices on hand
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especially for making tea. I like to also keep sliced ginger in my freezer and that way whenever
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I want to just make a simple honey lemon ginger tea I just grab a couple slices of lemon a few
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slices of ginger squeeze some honey and pour over boiling water and then that is all I need. I drink
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that all through the winter and you know they're great for recipes too. You could put frozen slices
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right on top of fish that you're baking or some other kind of meat so I really like having them
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on hand. You can also just cut it in wedges especially if you like to drink iced tea or
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if you like your water with lemon wedges but I like to have some wedges or slices on hand
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All right so I've got my tea. So the last thing that we're going to do is preserve lemons and I'm actually pretty new to
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this although it has been around for like a thousand years or more but it's the idea of
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preserving or fermenting lemons in some sort of salt. Sometimes there's a lot of different ways
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to do it. Plain salt, salt you can add spices, some people do it in a brine, you can do it with the
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lemons cut up or whole, there's all sorts of options. The way I'm going to do it today is
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actually with salt and sugar and I like this idea because it keeps a little bit of the sweetness of
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the lemon still present. So the first thing to do is to just cut up your lemons. Traditionally what
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you would do is cut them vertically into quarters like this but leave the bottom part of the lemon
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attached so that it stays like this. Then you would put your salt or in my case salt and sugar
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in that opening. For me I'm going to cheat and I'm just going to go ahead and cut it because I think
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I can fit more lemons in my jar if they're all the way cut through. Okay so for this version
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you want to use basically twice as much kosher salt as you use sugar. So in my case I use just a
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quarter cup of kosher salt and two tablespoons of sugar for three pretty good sized lemons
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So you can scale up or down as needed. All right so now I'm just going to cover it in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge
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overnight. So tomorrow this will have pulled out a lot of liquid and then it's simply a matter of
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putting all of the lemon salt sugar mixture including all of the juice into a sanitized jar
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You want to sanitize it just as if you were making any sort of other preserves because we don't want
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any bacteria to get in. The good thing this is such an acidic environment that I think it's very
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very likely that you won't have any problems with bacteria but we're going to follow the proper
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procedure. So make sure that your lemons are completely submerged and then you're going to
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put a lid on it as long as the the air can escape so you don't want a completely airtight seal
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Put it in the back of the pantry for three four or five days and then transfer it to the fridge
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and it'll be good for up to I don't know a year probably. So these are great to use because of
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all the salt they're great to use for savory dishes especially because of how salty they are
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but they have a lot of umami and they have that complex flavor that fermentation gives
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I haven't tried it yet but I believe you can do this also with whole lemons with like a salt water
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brine and that will preserve them similarly but they get a little less salty and they stay more
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juicy so you may still be able to use them in some sweet recipes. So I may try that next season
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with my next lemon harvest if I have a few more lemons to play with. So those are all the ways
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that I like to store my lemons for long-term use. Let me know in the comments what do you do to
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freeze or store your lemons? Have you tried fermented lemons? I'd be really curious to know
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and also feel free to share your favorite lemon recipes that you like to do with your homegrown
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lemons. I'm always up for trying new things, new recipes, so let me know in the comments
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Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video
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