Carolyn's Favorite Preserved Lemon Recipe (SUPER EASY)

[Music] everybody this is Carolyn from homesteading family and today Briana is helping me in the kitchen thanks Briana I was just on a trip down to Southern California to visit some family and I got to pick lemons from a lemon tree down there and lemons are in season this time of year if you live in that type of a climate so I want to show you how to make a treat that we just love in this house called preserved lemons and the way that we're preserving them is actually by lacto-fermented them but the common term for these are preserved lemons and you can see these are not very large lemons they're not too small either I'm expecting that it will take from about six to ten of these depending on the size of your lemons to fill a quart jar so here we have these I've already scrubbed these just in hot water so no soap or anything like that but just in hot water to clean them up and you see these little ends that are leftovers from the stems we're just gonna pop those guys right on off because you want to be able to hear can let's see there's a little bit of stem left on that one cuz you want to be able to go right ahead and into chopping these when these are done so you don't want any hard parts like that in there now we often think of lemons as being used as kind of a sweet food but this is gonna make a lemon that is great for your savory dishes like your roast chicken or even a salad dressing these is just going to be amazing you're gonna love this now you get to go ahead and choose your flavorings again we're fermenting this and when you're fermenting you get to have a lot of control over the spices that you put into there so you can kind of use whatever you want today we're gonna be using a few peppercorns some cinnamon sticks and a couple bay leaves right off my little babe us that I have you could add in some whole cloves you could add in some Chili Peppers that would be spicy that'd be good and a little bit of thyme would be great also but today we're gonna use these guys so what we're gonna do is just take our clean quart jar that we're gonna be fermenting in and we're gonna put those peppercorns right in there that's probably about ten peppercorns you don't have to be really exact and then Brianna can you go ahead and put in some of the cinnamon sticks that's about three cinnamon sticks and then we're gonna put our bay leaves and we're gonna put this all in right at the bottom just to make this easy alright before we can actually get started with the lemons we need to measure out the salt that we need and for preserved lemons we want to use about five teaspoons of salt per quart jar so are you counting you're making sure you got it right three good she's my backup counter there we go okay so now I know how much salt we need and we're gonna take this lemon and we're gonna put it stem side down now the stem side is the side that's probably flatter and not so pointy as the blossom side and then we're gonna cut this lemon into quarters without cutting all the way through we want to leave it intact at the bottom now that is purely cosmetic and kind of just the old-fashioned way of doing this so if you cut all the way through it's not gonna ruin your preserved lemons go for it in fact if you wanted to you can slice these or quarter them and just completely do that you know leave them quartered all the way okay now what we're gonna do Brianna this is gonna be your job here is we're gonna take our salt and we're gonna sprinkle that all in there like this okay so I'm gonna do this one to show you and then you can do the next one so imma do all right and we're just sprinkling that all the way in there we want to get about a teaspoon of salt in there okay and then we're gonna put them back together and we're gonna drop him right on in there we're gonna try and get them so that that intact spot is at the bottom because we're gonna squish as many of these in here one on top of the other and it's gonna kind of flatten them out all right you got that part yeah now we'll see if I can do my part and not cut right through the bottom alright if this one has a lot of seeds in it if you see that you can just go ahead and pop them off to the side you don't need to make too big of a fuss about the seeds but you know if they're popping out anyways go ahead and just take them off there we go okay and sprinkle it all in there and all the different parts that you can get it to okay okay alright can you put them back together put them right on top all right now what we have to do is we have to start squishing them there we go okay good job okay this guy's really pointy takes a lemon squishing I could get that okay all right now we're gonna go ahead and start squishing him in if you can get them stacked one inside the other that's gonna make it end up kind of a neater final product product but you know again that's just for looks and I gotta say I'm not the greatest at being a stickler for how things look okay and we just really want to stack these guys in there as well as we can and we're gonna take our sauerkraut pounder or wooden spoon or whatever you have and really start kind of pushing down in there and the point is to start extracting that juice the lemons gonna do or the salt is going to do quite a bit of the work of extracting the juice but you really want to pack them in there and we just want that packed in there really well pushing down pushing down and we our goal is to really fill this entire jar alright I got it there okay we're gonna get this last guy in here little extras oats okay I'm gonna just get him in there okay so you see that juice yeah that juice is filling all the way up I don't know if you're gonna be able to squish with the spoon right off okay there we go here let's see if I can help you push down a little whoo and you can see that this is filling right up with lemon juice Thank You Brianna that's great okay now I want to make sure that I get the rest of this salt that we didn't use and I want to get it in there and you can just put it right on the top it's gonna dissolve right in and then we have a little bit of salt here that didn't get that got loose on the cutting board so I'm gonna add just a pinch more just to make up for that now we've got all of this juice out and this is really full which is great it's exactly what you want but I also have some backup juice to help top it right on off so I'm gonna give it a little bit of a top just to fill this all the way up and then we're gonna close this down with one of the two-part canning lids that has the rubber seal on it so we're just gonna put that right on there and put it on quite tightly there just like that now this needs to sit out on the counter to start fermenting for about three days if your kitchen is really cool you may want to give it four to five days and you're gonna start seeing bubbles come up on it and you're gonna start seeing signs that it's fermenting now in order to make sure that it always stays under the level of the brine that's in there first of all we're gonna make sure that's on there nice and tight for this part but every time every day you want to come by and you want to flip it over at least once a day you want to flip it over so I'm gonna let it sit like this for about 12 hours and then I'll come back and flip it back like that for about 12 hours and that'll be ensure that there is plenty of brine covering or at least coming into contact with each of the parts of those limits every day so that it can't start to mold after about three days out on the counter we're going to go ahead and put this in the refrigerator or in cool storage a seller would be great or anything that stays at about 55 degrees or less and you're gonna want to let these kind of marinate for about a month before you start eating right now these preserved lemons have been sitting for about a month on the shelf they were turned upside down just like that about every day for maybe the first week and then they just after that I kind of turned them whenever I thought about it which was probably about every three four or five days and we just set them a different direction that way no mold can organize or form on the top of them at this point they're really well cultured and salted so they're gonna be really good so let's get into them now when you want to use your preserved lemons what you're going to be using actually is the rind and here we have one and you can see the the texture has changed a little bit it's gone from kind of that more rigid feeling to a little bit more I don't know I think I described it maybe as a gummy feel in my hands here now some people actually pull off the fruit the flesh of the fruit when they go to eat these but you know I find that it just adds a really nice flavor so I don't bother but you can certainly just peel the actual meat of the lemon right off if you wanted to now all you're gonna do with these guys is just chop them very finely for recipe and they I gotta tell you they pack a quite a punch so you don't need a whole lot and generally you want these diced really finely because you know you are eating the skins and well they've certainly toned down a little bit and that the salt flavor has moderated the seeing a little bit they're still lemon rinds so they're still pretty singing these add amazing flavor to pastas to chicken dishes to fish salad dressings all sorts of things anything you want to take from kind of just a normal everyday meal to zingy and really good just toss a few of these in and its really good so I'm just dicing these up really small and then they will be ready to go right on into whatever dishes you have and again I got to say pasta is just amazing if you're doing like a pasta primavera with the spring vegetables a little bit of this chopped really finely it's just amazing all right mmm that is good a little salty and definitely lemony zingy now these will last you an entire year if not longer when they're kept in cold storage so you can either put them in your refrigerator or in a cool pantry shelf and you know I've got to say I've left these out just on my kitchen shelf for a year at a time and they've always been great because they're fermented you don't really have a problem with them getting bad bacteria the concern would be that they might mold or that they might just get too mushy in to sour and they just wouldn't have the great flavor and quite the same punch but you know being that these are lacto-fermented you guys have a lot of versatility with them and they're so good so get out there get those lemons right now while they're still in season and get them preserved for your dishes all year long take care good bye [Music]

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 190,305

Keywords: lemons, preserved lemons, what to do with lemons, fermented lemons, too many lemons, old-fashoned preservation, homesteading family, how to preserve lemons, how to make preserved lemons, lacto fermentation, cured lemons, how to make cured lemons, easy preserved lemons, preserved lemons recipe

Id: 8ET48C3LXe0

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 02 2018