If you do this, the lemons will stay fresh all year long
Lemon is a familiar spice that everyone knows. You can use lemon for dipping sauces, salads, as a spice for dishes or use lemon to mix drinks, soft drinks. Most people will buy lemons and store them in the refrigerator for later use. Storing lemons in the refrigerator is not wrong, but after a while, the lemons will gradually wither and even spoil. To preserve lemons longer, always have them available at home for use, you can apply the following tips.
1. Store lemons in sand
Choose fresh, juicy lemons, then wash them and let them drain.
Prepare a jar or pot and some clean sand. The amount of sand must be enough to bury all the lemons and the sand must not contain soil, trash, gravel, etc. Spray a little water to moisten the sand.
Spread a layer of sand on the bottom of the jar/pot and then arrange the lemons on top. For each layer of lemons, spread a layer of sand. Do this until all the lemons are gone. The top layer will be sand covering the lemon.
Leave the lemon jar in a cool place, away from sunlight.
With this method, you can preserve lemons for about 2 months. Each time you use it, just take the lemon out and wash it. This is the way to preserve lemons, grapefruits, oranges, tangerines... that our ancestors used to use.
2. Preserve lemons in the freezer
You should choose lemons with thin skin, feel heavy in your hand and the lemons are not crushed.
Wash the lemons and soak them in salt water.
Then, take the lemons out of the salt water and rinse them with clean water. Leave the lemons in a colander to dry completely.
For large lemons, you only need to cut them in half, no need to peel them. However, for small lemons with hard skin, you should peel off the green skin on the outside and then cut them in half. There is no need to peel the lemons because the lemon skin is inherently quite thin and soft, making them easy to squeeze.
After cutting all the prepared lemons in half, you can proceed to squeeze the lemon juice. Using a lemon squeezer or a lemon squeegee is very convenient, helping to squeeze the maximum amount of juice from the lemon. If you don't have one, you can squeeze the lemon by hand as usual.
It is recommended to use a small piece of tissue paper to wrap around the lemon peel before squeezing. The tissue paper will absorb the essential oils secreted from the peel, helping the lemon juice not to be bitter. Note, you should fold the paper as small as possible to avoid the paper spreading out and absorbing all the lemon juice. When the paper is wet, replace it with a new one.
3. In addition, you can also peel the lemon peel, remove the seeds, and then put it in a slow juicer to extract the juice.
After squeezing all the prepared lemons, divide the lemon juice into small ice cube trays and put them in the freezer. When the lemon juice is frozen, take it out, remove the lemon cubes, put it in a box, cover it tightly and put it back in the freezer. So, when you need to use it, you just need to take out 1-2 lemon juice cubes. Just leave it for a few minutes and the lemon juice will dissolve by itself. Stored this way, you will have lemon juice to use all year round. The juice still retains its aroma.
