What to Do with a Lot of Lemons (When They Take Over Your Kitchen) Part 1

Did you just move into a new house and have found that you inherited a lemon tree or Aunt Hazel just dropped you off a large grocery bag full of lemons and you’re thinking these are going to go bad before you can use them all? You like the lemons, you want to use the lemons, you just can’t use them all this week. In my last blog What Can I Do with Lemons – Let Me Count the Ways I laid out many practical things you can do with lemons. I also talked about ways to make them last longer in the fridge. If that sounds helpful you can check that blog out by clicking here.

Do you want to spread out the lemon love and have its flavoring or it’s cleaning power for months to come? Do you want to preserve lemons for an even longer time frame than the 3 or 4 weeks the refrigerator techniques will give you? Let’s then discuss preserving. There are three primary methods of extending your lemon usage. Those three are: canning, dehydrating and freezing.

You might be wondering about vacuum sealing? You can vacuum seal lemons, slices, wedges and zest and because you have removed the air, they will last longer in the fridge than they would without. It can be tricky to do so. As the air is pulled out from the bags or jars it is possible for the pressure to begin to squeeze the juice out of the lemons (Hey maybe we found a new way to juice lemons!?). Vacuum sealing your lemons is most practical once you have dehydrated or frozen them. It will help to further extend their shelf life in conjunction with those methods. In the freezer, vacuum sealing will help reduce the chances of freezer burn.

Originally, I wrote this blog covering all three methods: canning, dehydrating and freezing but as I kept adding more information the blog became too long, and I decided to break it up into two parts. In this part one, we’ll be discussing vacuum sealing (which we just did) and canning. In part two I’ll go over dehydrating and freezing. If you are not interested in the canning option, you can click here and that will take you to What to Do with a Lot of Lemons – (When They Have Taken Over Your Kitchen) Part 2. So, let’s have a candid talk about lemon canning…

Canning –

There are multiple variants of this method. Fermentation is the first variant which includes pickling them with vinegar or simply putting them in a salt brine. Once fermented you can store them in the fridge up to 6 months. Fermented or salted lemons are best lent to cooking savory dishes. On a sweet but similar note, instead of fermentation, you can use sugar to preserve lemons in the form of jelly or syrup. If you choose this option, they will also last in the fridge approximately 6 months. Now, if you want any of those sweet, salty, or sour options to last longer than six months, you could then can them via water bath or pressure canning.

Now to can lemons in lemon juice or a syrup (or just plain lemon juice) you will use the water bath method. There is pressure canning which uses steam and reaches higher temperatures, but it is unnecessary to use on high acid foods like lemons and tomatoes. Water bath canning, like its name suggests using boiling water to preserve and seal food. You may jar whole lemons, sliced lemons, lemon wedges or just the juice. Though juicing lemons can take some time, I find the plain juice to be more versatile down the road because it can be easily used for either cooking, drinks or cleaning purposes.

If you are preserving lemon juice or lemons in juice, then you will can cold. By that I mean you sterilize your jars and let them cool before adding your room temp lemons and juice to the jars. Then once the lids and bands are on, the room temp jars can be put in cool/room temp/mildly warm water in your water bath. They will gradually heat up to boiling together from there. On the other hand, if you are canning your lemons in some sort of syrup, that is usually cooked up and poured over the lemons while relatively hot and at its greatest liquidity. So, you will can hot. Your jars will need to be warm to hot when you fill them up with lemons and the hot syrup. The water in the water bath will also already need to be warmed up as well. The basic rule in canning to avoid broken or exploding glass jars is – hot liquid into hot jars and hot jars into hot water, cool liquid into cool jars and cool jars into cool water.

“Lemon is the magic wand in the kitchen.” – Julia Child

Prepare your Jars, Lids and Seals – Check the manufacturer’s instructions as regards to the lids and bands. Some may tell you to sterilize/heat them and others may say it’s better not to. Make sure your jars are clean then sterilize them. You can do this all in one by running them through your dishwasher at its hottest setting. Or if they are already clean, run them through just a sterilization cycle. You can also boil them in water on the stove for 10 minutes if you do not have, or want to use your dishwasher for a handful of jars. If you are canning juice or lemons in juice then once the jars are sterilized, let them cool naturally in the dishwasher or pull them out of the water and set them on a towel on the counter to cool. DO NOT just set hot glass jars directly on the counter. Depending on what kind of counter you have the jars could damage it, or the counter could break your jars. Hot jars are more susceptible to breakage. If you are taking jars out of boiling hot water, you will want to use a jar lifter/canning tongs to keep from burning yourself or breaking the jars. If you are canning lemons in some sort of syrup, you will want to leave the jars in the hot water. You can also leave in the dishwasher with the door shut to do the same. You will want to time it out so you’re filling the jars with lemons and hot syrup while the jars are still hot (or at least pretty warm).

Wash and Prepare Your Lemons – Wash lemons thoroughly. Then slice, cut or juice your lemons depending on your preferred method and eventual purpose. Note, that when canning lemon rind and pulp it can bring a note of bitterness to your lemons or juice. To minimize this effect often brought on by juicing through a sieve you can filter your juice through cheesecloth. This also has the added benefit of catching even more of the seeds and pulpy bits.

Heat the water bath if appropriate – Fill it at least high enough with water so that you know it will completely cover your jars when they are submerged. In the end you will want to be covering them with at least an inch if not two inches of water. The water does not need to be at the boiling point, but it should be good and hot if you are going to be working with hot jars. If canning room temp juice or lemons the water does not need to be more than room temp. Just remember the important thing here is to not expose your glass jars to one extreme temperature followed by another to avoid cracking, breakage and possible explosions.

Make your syrup – If you are canning lemons in a lemon sugar syrup instead of just lemon juice, you will need to prepare and heat that up.

Fill the Jars – For canning cold, just line up your jars and fill them with juice leaving at least 1/2 to one inch of head space at the top. For lemons in lemon juice you can assembly line fill them with your wedges or slices and then pour over with lemon juice again leaving the same head space at the top. If you are using hot syrup instead, it might be better to only pull out one or two jars at a time to first fill with lemons and then pour your syrup over. Wipe the jar rims off. It’s recommended to do it with a clean rag or paper towel soaked in a little bit of white vinegar. You do not want anything to prevent a good seal between the jar and the lid. Take a lid and place it on the jar and tighten down with a band. DO NOT over tighten. Once you are done banding all your cold jars put them in the water bath. If you are working with the hot syrup continue to fill one or two jars at a time remembering to leave that head space at the top of the jars. After each individual jar is banded, place in the warm water bath. Once your water bath is full, or you have filled all the jars you can move on to the next step.

Process in the Water Bath – As I said before make sure there is 1 to 2 inches of water above the jars. If not add some more water to your water bath pan. Add hot water from the faucet or from your pan of sterilizing water if you are starting hot. Now put the lid on and bring to a full rolling boil. How long to boil depends on jar size and your altitude. I could not find any specific guidelines from the National Center for Home Food Preservation on canning lemon juice or canning regular lemons. I have come across multiple people who say for Pints and 1/2 pints of juice it seems to be 5 minutes. The only citrus food I could find on the NCHFP’s website was for pineapple. I figure this would be the closest to canning actual lemons. I have included the chart below from their website. I will update this if I find some more exact information in the future.

Remove Jars – Prep a place on the counter with a towel where they will be able to sit and cool for hours. Remove the jars one at a time using your canning tongs/jar lifters. Place jar on prepared towel. Jars are more sensitive to breaking when they are hot so be gentle with them and try not to bump them into each other or anything else while placing them. Once all jars are removed let them sit and completely cool. While they are cooling you will hear pop sounds as they individually seal. Some might pop and set right away other may take up to 24 hours. When they are finished cooling the lids should be firm and should not move when pressed down upon. If a lid bounces back, it may not have sealed. Just refrigerate it and use it sooner than later. The other jars that did seal, just store in a preferably cool dark place in your pantry.

“If you think home canning is dangerous wait until you learn about the ingredients in store bought food.” – Katherine Umberger

This has been a great get together. Hope it was for you as well. We’ll convene again soon for Part 2.

Until next visit,

Zee