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Kitchen Tactics: Segmenting Citrus

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Segmenting citrus is not my idea of a good time, however, for the sake of quality it is very important to segment citrus for canning (and for some recipes in general).  Keeping the membrane on any citrus will turn your canned product into an overly bitter item that is uneatable and, trust me on this, when you spend time canning a product it sucks to throw it out because it’s unpalatable.  Also, there are  some citrus that have very thick membranes (like grapefruit and pomelo) that just ruins the flavor of the fruit because it’s just too chewy to enjoy.  I love grapefruit but I hate cutting it in half and eating it with a spoon (I know, I’m high maintenance) so when I buy grapefruit, I will segment 2 or 3 of them at a time and then eat them within a few days.

For the sake of example (and because I have 8 pounds in my fridge),  I will show you how to segment citrus using a pomelo.  Pomelos are a very big grapefruit.  In fact, they are  considered the grand-daddy of grapefruit.  Their rind is thick and their pith is extra thick and super spongy.

You will need a boning knife, a bowl, a cutting board, and your beautiful citrus!  Make sure you sharpen your boning knife before hand; the sharper your knife the easier and quicker segmenting your citrus will be (just be sure not to cut yourself)!  Make sure you wash and scrub your citrus and dry it.

First, you will cut the top and bottom of your citrus so that you can lay it flat on one end.  You want to make sure you cut low enough so that you expose the fruit.

My picture taking is questionable in general but this is where my picture taking gets uber-questionable. 
I only have two hands, people!
 

You’re going to slice down the citrus, following the curvature of the fruit.  Your goal is to just get rid of the membrane.  You will lose some citrus in the process but if your knife is sharp enough, it will be neglible.

 

Once you finish slicing around the curvature of the citrus, it will look like this.

It’s depressing to see how much fruit is actually inside all that rind.
 

Now, this is where a sharp knife is important and where I ran out of hands so I have no pictures to show you how to do this particular step.  Sorry!  Holding the fruit over a bowl, you will slice down between the fruit and the membrane down to the core, repeat on the other side of the segment of citrus.  You should be able to scoop out the fruit and let it fall into the bowl.  Hopefully the following picture shows you the gist of what we are trying to do.

 

The first few times you segment a citrus, it will take you a while to do it and you will be cursing me to the high heavens for even talking you into doing it.  However, with practice, you get really quick at it and something juicy and not fibrous, like a lemon, will be super easy to do.  You’ll work your way all the way around the fruit and will end up with just the core and membranes.

 

Give it a good squeeze into the bowl and toss it out.  You’ll end up with a bowl of lovely segmented citrus!

Lemony Seafood Pasta

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I love seafood like it’s nobody’s business.  I would eat seafood every day if I could.  Moving to Maryland was one of the greatest things I did for my gastronomy because the seafood is so cheap and plentiful out here!  It’s amazing!  I think I ate seafood straight for a month or two when I first moved here (partly because I didn’t realize that it’s here all the time!)  One of my favorite products to buy is the frozen mixed seafood bags.  They are fairly cheap and you get a lot of meat for the price so they are a great deal.

No! No! No! Don’t turn your nose up!
I promise, we have something great planned!

I’ve made several dishes with mixed seafood medley but the one I’m going to share with you is one that I turn to the most.  It’s a quick, nutritous meal and I’ve added whatever is in my fridge to the mixture.  I’ve added spinach, kale, tomatoes, squash, basically anything that looks like it won’t last another day, I’ll throw it in there.  Tonight I just made the basic recipe and that includes only onions and garlic (I’m running low on food since it’s the middle of March.  Spring veggies can’t get here soon enough!). 
 
I’ve noticed with seafood, many people *think* they don’t like it and I’ve found that it’s because they have never had it cooked correctly.  Seafood is a very fragile meat and most people treat seafood like they would any other meat.  Don’t do that. Overcooking seafood turns it into a rubbery flavorless mess.  Seafood (both fish and other kinds) need to be cooked at high temperatures for a short time.  Because of this, I cook this specific recipe in my wok.  You want a fire-hot pan, warm oil, and cold seafood (DO NOT DEFROST THE SEAFOOD BEFORE YOU COOK IT!).  Since this is going to cook at such a high temperature, you want to get everything prepared before you start the cooking in the wok.  Seriously, this will take you about 10 minutes from start to finish once your ready for the wok part.
 
The very first thing you want to do is zest a whole lemon into 1/4 cup olive oil.  You want the lemon zest to infuse the olive oil.  Juice the lemon and set the juice aside.  Cook some pasta; I do about two handfuls of quinoa spaghetti.  Reserve about a 1/2 cup of pasta water before you drain the pasta.  Chop an onion and 3 (or 5!) garlic cloves.  Make sure you have sea salt, freshly ground pepper, and red chili flakes available.  That’s it!  Now you’re ready to cook.
 
 
Set your wok over high heat.  Once the wok is nice and hot, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and swirl it around.  Throw in your onion and garlic and caramelize.  Once the garlic and onion are caramelized to your liking, add the lemon juice and olive oil with the lemon zest.  Bring this up to a boil.  Once it’s at a boil, pour in the whole 1 pound bag of frozen seafood, stir it up, add salt, pepper, and chili flakes to taste, and cover.  Shake the woke while it’s covered a few times.  Keep stirring until the seafood is just about cooked through but not all the way.  Add your pasta and shake the pasta vigorously with tongs within the sauce.  The starch from the pasta will thicken the sauce.  If you need a little more liquid you can add some of the pasta water.  Cover, cook the seafood through, divvy up into bowls, top with parmesan and dinner is served!
 

Lemony Seafood Pasta
 
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
Zest and juice of one lemon
Salt
Pepper
Red chili Flakes 
  1. Cook pasta, reserve 1/2 cup pasta water, drain, and set aside.
  2. Using a rasp, zest the skin of one lemon into 1/4 cup olive oil
  3. In a very hot wok, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil (about one turn around the pan).  Add onions and garlic and caramelize.
  4. Add lemon juice and olive oil with lemon zest, bring to a boil.  Add frozen seafood, salt, pepper, and chili pepper to taste.  Stir and cover.
  5. Once 3/4 cooked through, add pasta and shake vigorously with tongs to thicken sauce.  Add some reserved pasta water if it needs more liquid.
  6. Cover and cook the seafood through
  7. Serve with parmesan cheese and crusty bread.

Bar Top: Brown Sugar Whiskey Sour

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I was never an imbiber of whiskey sours before.  Every time I tried one, they were just…very disappointing.  Maybe it was the premixed sweet and sours that bars use in their drinks.  YUCK!  Once I started really getting into setting up a home bar, however, a whole new range of drinks that I didn’t like before, were suddenly delicious!  Using quality ingredients in your drinks will turn any drink from blah to amazing…you won’t even need the highest top of the line liquor either!  I’ve made this whiskey sour with rye whiskey and bourbon.  Both of them are excellent.

This whiskey sour takes whiskey sour to a whole ‘nother level.  I present to you:  The Brown Sugar Whiskey Sour:

Brown Sugar Whiskey Sour

Adapted from The Vintage Mixer

Yield:  1 cocktail

Juice from half a lemon
1/4 oz Brown Sugar Simple Syrup (recipe follows)
1.5 oz Straight Rye Whiskey

  1. Pour 1/4 oz Brown Sugar Simple Syrup in a rocks glass, add juice from half a lemon, add Whiskey, stir, add ice.  Enjoy.
  2. Add more brown sugar simple syrup or whiskey to suit your taste.

Brown Sugar Simple Syrup

3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup water

1.  Mix sugar and water in a small pot and simmer until brown sugar dissolves.  Turn off heat, pour into a jar and cool.  Store in the fridge.

Candied Lemons

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Remember when I told you to keep the lemon peel from the lemons we juiced for the canned lemonade concentrate?  Well, wait until you try these homemade candies!  Making homemade candies makes my heart sing with joy and candied lemons are fantastic.  There is just so much you can do with them and I plan on posting recipes in the future. 

Take the peel from 10 juiced lemons, remove the pulp of the lemon, and pick out any rough pith.  If the skins are really thick, you may have to cut off some of the pith.

 



Now, slice the peel into long strips.  Place the peel in a large pot and fill with cold water.  Put on the stove and place on high, bring to a boil, and boil for 20 minutes.  Drain in a colander.  Repeat this process 2 more times for a total of 3 times.  The last time you drain, dry the pot, then put in 6 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water.  Bring this up to a boil and when the sugar just starts to brown add the lemons.  Simmer the lemons in the sugar until the lemon peel turns translucent.

Place silpat or wax paper on two cookie trays and layer the trays with sugar.  Once the candied lemons are ready, using a fork scoop out the peel and layer them on the cookie trays in a single layer and try to make it so they don’t touch.  Sprinkle them with sugar to cover.  Let them dry overnight.

Once they are dry, store in quart jars with the sugar they dried in.

You can eat them like this, wrap them in cellophane and give them as gifts, or my favorite:  dip one side in dark chocolate.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Candied Lemons

Yield:  2 Quarts

Peel from 10 lemons
6 cups sugar
3 cups water

  1. Remove the skin of the lemon and remove as much pith as possible.  Cut the peel into strips.
  2. Put lemon peel in a large saucepan with cold water to cover, bring to a boil over high heat then drain in a colander.  Repeat this process 2 more times for a total of 3 times.  Drain lemons in a colander
  3. Whisk the sugar with water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 8 to 9 minutes (if you took the temperature of the sugar with a candy thermometer it would be at the soft thread stage, 230-234).
  4. Add the peels and simmer gently, reducing heat to retain a simmer.
  5. Cook until the peels get translucent, about 45 minutes.   Resist the urge to stir the peels as it will introduce crystals into the syrup.  If necessary, swirl the pan around to move the peels around.
  6. Remove peels with a fork and place on a sugar covered cookie sheet lined with a silpat or wax paper.  Sprinkle the lemons with sugar.  Let them dry overnight.
  7. Store them in their sugar.

A Few of My Favorite Things: Pearson Ranch California Oranges

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I adore lemons probably more than any other food, especially of the citrus group.  I grew up in Arizona and always took lemons, well citrus in general, for granted.  They were everywhere and always for free.  Someone somewhere, either at work or in your neighborhood, had a lemon tree that just grew too many lemons.

No more scurvy for me!  Yar!

Then I moved to Maryland and the the lemon party was over.  WHAT?!  How do these people live without lemons?!  I didn’t even know it was possible.  Lemons are worth their weight in gold here.  The sad thing is, citrus in Maryland are generally in a sad state.  By the time they are picked by the corporate Florida farms, then boxed, shipped to a distribution corporation, trucked to Maryland, distributed to the grocery store, wait in the grocery store cold room, make it to the shelves, to *finally* get picked by a customer, the citrus are dried and shriveled.  It’s really quite sad.  That should not be the life of a citrus fruit.  The citrus you can find from the Farmer’s Markets are not much better, considering that they still have to get trucked to the farmers – and some of the farmers that sell year round do deal with distribution companies.  After my upteenth dried out orange/lime/lemon, I have, for the most part, stayed away from citrus since I’ve been here.
Then I got depressed and homesick around February.  It was another cold day.  I needed a pick me up. 

I needed lemons.

I did a search online and did a little research.  A few of my requirements were direct delivery, no distribution centers, and a locally/family owned farm.

I came across Pearson Ranch California Oranges.  Ok, ok, I know that California is not local to Maryland -BUT- it is family owned and not a huge corporate farm conglomerate.  They are a conventional citrus farm, they specialize in direct delivery to their customers, and they have a lot of East Coast customers.  They have a monthly lemon and orange club that you can join, they have combo citrus packs, and they also have a plethora of different citrus to choose from; from Pomelos to Meyer Lemons to Keffir Limes and Blood Oranges.  If there is a citrus you want, they more than likely have it.  However, they do go by seasons so do keep that in mind.

Farmer Tony is the owner and he is very acessible through email and Facebook.  All of their employees are quick to respond and are very helpful – and – the most important thing, their citrus are delicious!

Canned Lemonade Concentrate

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Folks, I pulled out the big gun:



The dehydrator holds all the citrus peel!

The love of my life, my Kitchen Aide Stand Mixer and her attachment, the citrus juicer.  I love lemonade and last year I made a limited number of canned lemonade concentrate.  I did not make enough and I ran out halfway through the year.  Booooooo.  This year, I was determined to make enough lemonade concentrate to last the whole year.

So, we had the 15 zested lemons from the limoncello and the 15 zested lemons from the dried peel, cut those lemons in half and juice them.  Then cut in half and juice more lemons to equal 9 cups of lemon juice (DO NOT THROW AWAY THE PEEL!  WE ARE GOING TO MAKE SOMETHING WITH THEM!).

Mmmmmm, Lemonade…

Canned Lemonade Concentrate

Yield:  8 pints

Ingredients
9 cups of fresh Lemon Juice
5 cups of water
4 cups of sugar

  1. Prepare jars, lids/rings, and canning equipment per “Kitchen Tactics: Boiling Water Bath Canning”
  2. Place lemon juice in a large stock pot.  Add 5 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar.  Bring to a low boil then turn down the heat and simmer.
  3. Ladle the hot concentrate into 8 hot pints leaving 1/4″ headspace.
  4. Process via BWB for 15 minutes.
  5. To make lemonade, dilute one pint of lemonade concentrate with however many pints of water to suit your taste.

Kitchen Tactics: Boiling Water Bath Canning

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Yesterday in the “Let’s Talk About” series, “Let’s Talk About:  Boiling Water Bath Canning”, we discussed the reasons why BWB canning works.  In order to not make either post huge, I decided to break it down into two parts.  Today we are going to discuss *how* to BWB can.

First, let’s look at the equipment you will need.  I have a Norpro 18 Quart Porcelain Enamel Canning Pot.  However, you don’t necessarily need the same pot as I do.  Any very large pot will do.  Next you’ll need some sort of canning starter kit, I bought the Back to Basics 286 5-Piece Home Canning Kit.  This has everything you’ll need:  jar lifter, jar funnel, and magnet pen.  You will also need a ladle.

She gets a lot of use…
Never forget the ladle!
The key to canning is efficiency.  You don’t want your product getting cold, being poured into a warm jar on a cool counter, then bringing that jar up to a boil in your pot.  That will make the jar shatter and all that hard work will be for naught.
So, set up your kitchen with towels and/or place mats.  I find that placemats work great for canning.   Place your empty jars in your canning pot, fill your pot with water until the jars are covered and set the heat on high.  I always bring up my jars to boiling at the same time as the water to reduce chances of breakage.

This takes awhile, so start this first before you start on your product.  You can let the jars boil in there all day long if you want.  It won’t hurt them.  If you do it this way, you won’t have to worry about bringing your jars back up to temperature.   You also want to make sure you boil your jars for 10 minutes to sterilize them before you fill them with your product. However, when you take the jars out to fill them with product, you want to turn the heat off.
Place your lids and rings in a heat proof bowl.  Once the water is at a rolling boil in the canning pot, using your ladle, fill that bowl with the boiling water.  This will soften the rubber on the lids giving you a higher chance of seal when processing.

Once your product is ready to can, pull out the jars and carefully pour out the boiling water from the jars.  Place your jars on a placemat.  For the sake of efficiency and reduction in mess, I always place my product right by my jars.  Place your funnel on your jars and start filling.  Each recipe is different on how much head space you need to give for a proper seal, so be sure to read the recipe carefully before starting the canning process.

These are pictures from my 3 Citrus Marmalade.  We will visit this recipe in the future!
Once you finish filling your jars, wipe the rims with a damp papertowel to remove any gunk from the rims, this helps in ensuring a seal.  Using your magnet pen, place the lids on your jars.


Once all your lids are on, screw on the rings only until they are finger tip tight.  You don’t want to crank these on.

Using your jar lifter, place them in your pot, turn the heat back on and when the water comes up to a rolling boil, thats when you start your process time.  It will take a little while for the water to come back up to a boil, so be patient.  Once the processing time is done, turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the pot for 5 extra minutes.  When that 5 minutes is up, pull out the jars with your jar lifter, let any water fall off the top, and place them on a place mat on your counter.  You should start hearing the “ping” of sealing jars.  After they’ve been cooling on your counter for an hour, you want to check the seal.

The easiest (and coolest) way to check the seal is to remove the rings and lift the jar up by the lid.  If you can pick up the whole jar, it is sealed.  If the seal comes off at all during that lift, it did not seal correctly.  You can either reprocess or place in the fridge and eat it within the next few weeks.

If they sealed, leave them on the counter, undisturbed until they are cool.  I normally let them sit overnight.  Once they are totally cooled, wipe them down so that there is no gunk that can cause sealing failure overtime, label, and store them in a dark cabinet.  One important tip: you do NOT want to store the jars with the rings still ON.  The ring can rust on to the jar and then it’s a royal pain to get off.
And now you know the basics!  Happy Canning!


Let’s Talk About: Boiling Water Bath Canning

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This is a long, boring post but it is extremely important.  Please read it before you start any BWB canning!

There are several ways that you can preserve your food:  freezing, drying, pickling, pressure canning, Boiling water bath (BWB) canning, preserving in oil, curing, and smoking.  Most of my preservation techniques center on freezing, pickling, and BWB canning.  This year my goal is to expand into drying and pressure canning.  I’m not much of a preserving in oil fan as the foods that you preserve in oil become mushy as time goes on and they really don’t last that long.  Somethings preserved in oils will only be good for a month or two and if I’m going to put so much time into something, what’s the point?  I don’t do curing or smoking, either.  It’s just way too easy to buy cured and smoked meats to put the time and effort into curing and smoking.  Today, we are going to talk about Boiling Water Bath canning.

BWB CANNING CAN ONLY BE DONE FOR HIGH ACID FOODS!

Let me repeat, BWB CANNING CAN ONLY BE DONE FOR HIGH ACID FOODS!
Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me explain why.  Overall, preserving is about prolonging the shelf life of foods by killing or neutralizing the agents that would otherwise cause them to spoil(1).  Spoilers are enzymes, molds, yeasts, and bacteria.  Bacteria is the big boogeyman of home canning, specifically salmonellae, staphylococcus, and clostridium botulinum.

BWB canning works because water boils at 212.  Enzymes die once their host gets heated past 140. Mold and yeast are destroyed from 140-190.  However, there are two classes of bacteria.   Some bacteria die at temperatures exceeding 240, which is where acid comes into play with BWB. The process of BWB kills all spoilers except clostridium botulinum, HOWEVER, this bacteria cannot thrive in a pH of 4.5 or less.  Pickling low acid foods is the only way to safely BWB can low acid foods.  Pickling is adding an acid to a food. You can add acid by using a form of vinegar and/or lemon juice (citric acid!) or fermenting the food (3).  This is why BWB is safe for foods that have a pH of 4.5 or less (2).

BWB canning also works because as the gass jars are boiling in water, the heat pushes the air out of the tissues and creates a vacuum seal.  Without oxygen, spores cannot bloom in your food.  The temperature of the boiling water will also sterilize the jars and the foods.

Once you have finished canning an item, you must make sure that the lid is vacuum sealed on. If the lid is not vacuumed sealed on and comes off easily, you must refrigerate it immediately and eat it within 2 weeks.  If the seal is strong you can place it on your shelf.  When you want to use that food item, always check the seal of that item.  If you can lift off the seal easily, you must toss the item.  For whatever reason, that item did not preserve correctly and the bacteria have been having a party in that jar.  I have been BWB canning for 3 years and have only had 1 canned item spoil on me, so if you follow the rules your chances of failure are miniscule.  If, for whatever reason, you have doubts about an item, just throw it out.  It’s better to be safe than sorry!

If you are interested in preserving, I highly suggest that you do your own research.   Every canner SHOULD have Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.  After that, every canner should have the National Center for Home Food Preservation as a favorites link.  The National Center for Home Food Preservation stays current on the latest canning research and offers advice and tips.  If at any time you read a recipe that you are just not sure about, you can go to NCHP and look up that technique to see if the technique is valid.  I highly suggest to add Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone, Canning for a New Generation by Liana Krissoff, and The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard to your canning book library.  After that, there are a myriad of canning books out there that you can follow for recipes.  Finally, there is a wonderful online forum called Harvest Forum on GardenWeb.  The community is extremely knowledgeable, fun, and quick to respond.  There are other canning forums but I find that the others tend to promote unsage canning practices and tend to be not as up-to-date on modern canning practices.  Harvest Forums members’ primary concern is for your safety, how can you argue with that?

Finally, BWB canning is a highly effective way of preserving food for your family.  With the state of corporate canned items being loaded with sugars, MSG, and other non-pronounceable preservatives, you will find that canning your own food items is a much healthier way.  Plus, home canned items taste so much better.  Once you start, you will wonder why you never did it!

1.       Well Preserved, Page 13, Eugenia Bone, Clarkson Potter/Publishers New York 2009.
2.       Well Preserved, Page 14, Eugenia Bone, Clarkson Potter/Publishers New York 2009.
3.      Canning for a New Generation, Page 15, Liana Krissoff, Stewart Tabori & Change New York 2010.

HAPPY CANNING!
Resources:
1.    Well Preserved, Eugenia Bone, Clarkson Potter/Publishers New York 2009.
2.   Canning for a New Generation, Liana Krissoff, Stewart Tabori & Change New York 2010
3.  Ball Blue Book, TMS Ball Corporation, Hearthmark LLC Indiana 2010

Dried Citrus Zest Strips

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I was in the grocery store today as there was meat on sale and because I can never go to the grocery store for only one thing, I ran into this in the spice aisle:

SIX DOLLARS AND 50 CENTS?!  SIX DOLLARS AND 50 CENTS for 1.5oz of “California Lemon Peel”?!  Are you kidding me?!  Is this stuff powdered gold?!  And, knowing how corporations like to cut corners, you know that this is not made from Meyer Lemons. 

But wait, it gets better!

FIVE DOLLAR AND 50 CENTS!  FIVE DOLLARS AND 50 CENTS for 1.5oz of “Valencia Orange Peel”  If Lemon Peel is powdered gold then Orange Peel must be powdered copper!

Being from Arizona, my first reaction was to laugh out loud hysterically in the aisle of the grocery store, then I started taking pictures.  I think the Marylanders in the grocery store must of thought I was insane for making such a big deal about dried citrus peel.  I wanted to walk up to random people in the grocery store and yell at them about how they are being ripped off!  haha.

Lets look at the ingredients lists:

To be fair, this is a pretty good ingredients list with only two ingredients but the second ingredient is Sodium Sulfate.  Sodium sulfate is a salt that is mainly used in the manufacture of detergents and paper pulp.

Folks, I’ve got a real easy method for you and you don’t have to break the bank to do it either.  Grab your vegetable peeler, grab the citrus of your choice, and peel the zest right off those citrus (much like the way we did for the limoncello ).  Make sure you limit the amount of pith on the zest as the pith is bitter.  The zest hold all the apparent powdered gold – or powdered copper for that matter.

Lay those peels in a single layer in your dehydrator and check them every 4 hours or so.  Most of my peels dried overnight.  Once they are done drying put them on a plate to cool off.  Once they are completely cooled, place them in a pint jar.  OR, you can lay them on a single layer on a plate or cookie sheet and let them dry at their own pace.

BAM!  Ingredients:  Citrus Peel

You can pulverize them into a powder, place a couple of peels in a grinder with peppercorn and sea salt to use as a spice on chicken or fish, or grab a strip and drop it in your water!

Real Deal Limoncello, First Phase

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Do yourselves a favor and start this Limoncello with me.  This method for Limoncello will create the best damn Limoncello you’ve ever had.  It’s amazing and it takes about 9 months to completely mature, so start it now.   It will be ready to bottle by Christmas.  You can bottle it and keep it for yourself or give it as gifts to people who really deserve it. 

First, you will need a 750ml bottle of vodka, not necessarily high end but one that’s good enough that you would serve to other people (I like using Skyy), and a 750ml bottle of Everclear.   Next, you’ll need 15 lemons who’s skins are just about perfect.  You don’t want many bruises because we need the zest.  Finally, you need a good vegetable peeler and a 2 gallon glass jar.

Using your vegetable peeler, peel only the zest of the lemons into long strips.
 
Make sure you only get the zest.  You don’t want any of the pith or it will make your limoncello bitter and bitter limoncello will get you thrown out of any self respecting Italian’s house!  The zest is where all the sweetness and flavor of the lemon is. 
Place these strips in the 2 gallon glass jar. It’s best that you use glass because of the acid from the lemons. Once you have all the lemon zest in the jar, pour the bottle of vodka and Everclear in.
Shake this like a Polaroid picture and put it in a dark place.  Every once in awhile, or – if you’re like me – every time you remember, shake the lemon zest and alcohol mixture.  In 3 months, take out a slice of zest and bend it.  If it breaks, you’re ready to add the sugar syrup mixture; if it doesn’t keep the jar in the dark place.  The goal is to leach all the lemon essential oils out of the zest and into the alcohol.  We’ll check in on the liqueuer in about 3 months.
 
We are going to juice the actual lemon for a canned lemonade concentrate recipe that will follow this post.
 
Real Deal Limoncello
Adapted from Slow Travel Italy
 
Ingredients
 

One Bottle (750 ml) Everclear (95% alcohol 190 Proof)

One Bottle (750 ml) good but not necessarily premium vodka (40% alcohol 80 Proof)
15 large thick skinned bright yellow lemons (without scars or flaws in the skin if possible.)
 

Day 1
 
1.  Make sure the lemons are cleaned to remove all pesticides, dirt, and fertilizer chemicals.  Dry the lemons.  use a potato peeler to peel just the yellow part of the skin off the lemons.
 
2.  Place lemon zest into a 2 gallon glass jar.
 
3.  Pour the bottle of Everclear and the bottle of vodka into the jar.
 
4.  Shake the jar and put away in a cool dark place.
 
5.  Shake jar every other week…or whenever you remember.
 
6.  We will revisit our liqueur in about 90 days