How To Get More Juice From a Lemon
You’ve heard all the techniques: microwaving lemons, picking the rounder ones, keeping them in the fridge - all to get more of that fresh, tangy juice. But what really works? And how can you get more of your money’s worth from your citrus? We test out the theories…
Old vs Fresh
You buy a bag of lemons, tip them out in your fruit bowl and then leave them there until you need them. But over time, they start to dry out. They might start to look a bit wrinkly and tough on the outside, too. And all this drying out doesn’t bode well for the juice inside. To test this, we squeezed two lemons, both the same size - one bought earlier that day, and another one that had been sitting on the kitchen worktop for a week. The older lemon was tougher to squeeze and gave us a LOT less juice, proving that if you want juicy lemons - buy them as you need them, nice and fresh.
Round vs Oval
You can get really round lemons and slightly longer, oval ones. But do they make a difference to the amount of juice you get from them? We set our biceps to work with the juicer, but although the rounder lemon produced a tiny bit more juice, we’d never have normally noticed the difference. Keep buying your lemons, whatever shape they are.
Chilled vs Warm
So there’s that well-known lemon juice hack where you’re promised more juice from your lemon if you warm it up first. To keep things fair, we chose two lemons that were the same size and chilled one overnight in the fridge. The other one, we heated on high in the microwave for 20 seconds before juicing it, by hand. The results? They’re actually surprisingly close - our chilled lemon actually gave us a tiny bit more juice, but the warmer lemon was a lot easier to squeeze, using less muscle power.
Smooth vs Lumpy Peel
When I worked in a pub, the landlord I worked for told me that lemons with smoother peel are better for cutting into wedges and dropping into customers’ G&Ts, because they were more juicy. Really? Why would the look of the peel make any difference to the juice inside? Well, according to our experiment, it actually doesn’t.
Squeezing With A Juicer vs By Hand
It makes sense. If you want to get the most juice out of a lemon, use a juicer. Well, that depends on how much squeezing you want to do by hand. It didn’t make much difference to us, both lemons yielding pretty much the same amount of juice. After we squeezed the lemon by hand, we turned the empty peel inside out and squeezed again, making sure to get every last drop of the juice. The juicer was a lot easier and quicker, but it does show that if you squeeze your lemons by hand, you can get just as much out of it as you can with a juicer.
So. You want to get more juice out of your lemon? The best thing you can do is just buy them fresh, as and when you need them, rather than buy them in bulk to last a week or two. Warm up the fresh lemon for a few seconds (some people warm it between their hands or on the worktop) if you want it to squeeze more easily and do a bit less work. But don’t choose lemons by peel texture or shape - they’re all good for squeezing.
[PHOTO CREDITS: JO ROMERO]
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