"State Fair" Lemonade - Best Lemonade Ever - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with state fair lemonade that's right i am very excited to be showing you how to make real authentic vintage lemonade the kind you might enjoy in a hot summer day if one of those stands at the state fair maybe while you're not on a corn dog or funnel cake and while everybody thinks they've had lemonade before unless you've had it made using this method you actually have not not even close so with that let's go ahead and get started and what we're going to need here are six of the finest lemons you can find which i've washed very thoroughly and if yours seem kind of waxy you might want to give them a pretty good scrub under hot water since the whole key to this recipe is using the peel and what we'll do first is take a vegetable peeler and peel the zest completely off all these lemons right not too too deep mostly we just want the yellow part but if there's a little bit of white attached that's totally fine and if you've ever wondered why the lemonade at those stands at the state fair or the county fairs is so much better than ours well this recipe is going to show you why okay most of us just make lemonade out of lemon juice but as you might know the oils in the lemon peel contain a tremendous amount of lemon flavor and if we can somehow extract that and add it to the flavor of the juice we're going to end up with something far superior so what we'll do is peel all those lemons as shown and of course we're going to save those so we can cut them in half and squeeze them later and then to our bowl of lemon peels we're going to go ahead and dump in our white granulated sugar and then we'll give that a thorough mix and what's going to happen here is this sits is that sugar is going to pull out all those essential oils from the peel and then we will use the sugar to sweeten our lemonade thereby introducing all that lemony goodness into our drink so a very simple trick but devastatingly effective so once we have that mixed what we'll do is cover it and we'll let it sit out from anywhere between 2 and 12 hours in a little longer it's probably better but 2 hours is fine at which point your sugar and lemon should look something like this and what this mixture is actually called by ancient romans or contemporary williamsburg bartenders is oliosacrum which yes translates to oily sugar and then what we'll do next is place five cups of cold fresh water over high heat and we will bring that up to a boil and then just as soon as that water starts to boil we will turn off the heat and transfer in our sugar and lemon mixture and we'll go ahead and give that a stir and then we'll simply let it sit there for about five minutes or so or until all that sugar is dissolved at which point we're simply going to strain it back into the bowl and man do i wish you could smell this this stuff smells so good and then the only thing this needs to finish it off is of course our fresh lemon juice which we do not want to squeeze in while this is really hot otherwise i think we might lose some of that bright fresh lemon flavor so what we'll do after straining is just let this cool down to room temp at which point then it's safe to go ahead and squeeze in our lemons which i'm just going to do by hand through this strainer although if you have one of those lemon squeezers like i usually use that might work out even better but anyway the strainer was right here so i used the manual method and obviously if you want to adjust the amount of sugar or the amount of lemon go ahead i mean you are after all the mr kincaid of your state fair lemonade and it's up to you to manage your family's business beverage related or otherwise so you're definitely allowed to tweak the amounts and i've been known to squeeze in a little extra fresh lemon juice because i like mine tangy and that's it once our fresh lemon juice has been squeezed in we can transfer everything into a serving pitcher at which point i like to cover it and refrigerate it until very very well chilled all right if you pour this over ice now and it's not super cold it's going to melt the ice and maybe water down your drink so i'm going to go ahead and pop this in the fridge for a while after which we can pull it out and pour it over some ice and then we'll enjoy probably the greatest lemonade you've ever tasted all right we have that tangy fresh lemon flavor from the juice along with that much deeper more intense more complex flavor from the lemon oil which is what makes this a truly extraordinary beverage so i think we need to update that saying when life gives you lemons peel them first toss them in sugar and then make lemonade oh yeah words to live by although there is one small problem i should warn you about and that's that once you start drinking lemonade made like this it is virtually impossible to go back drinking it how you used to and you're going to need a really good poker face when your friend hands you a glass of that non-authentic lemonade because even though you're going to be smiling and say thanks your eyes and body language might be communicating this is not everything it could be at which point their eyes might communicate just drink it and stop looking at me like that but anyway that's it how to make that awesome old-fashioned lemonade that you get at those stands at the state fair since pretty much all those have been cancelled this year we thought the timing was perfect for showing you how to do this which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 791,173

Rating: 4.961657 out of 5

Keywords: Lemonade, real, vintage, authentic, best, state, fair, chef, john, food, wishes, recipe, drink, beverage, summer, cold, iced, lemons

Id: _YYF9vBLzGU

Length: 5min 19sec (319 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/reldan]

The rising intonation sounds like questions to me, but damn I’m making this tonight!!

[u/kevhto2]

It's going to be over 100'F where i'm at this weekend... guess what i'm making tomorrow!?

[u/steph6608]

Ive probably made over 30 of Chef Johns recipes. He is my go-to online food blogger. He is affable and encouraging when he speaks on his videos. This audio sounds a bit faster then his normal cadence. Please check out some of his other videos and make a recipe or two. You will not be disappointed.

[u/reldan]

The actual recipe in case you want to make it.

[u/TraumaKahuna]

How much sugar did he use?

[u/MiraMari_520]

I love this guy! Once I got used to his intonation, I worry if he’s feeling himself when the intonation is not pronounced.

“And as always, enjoooyyyyy”

[u/purpleladybug]

I just can't stand the odd phrasing and lilt of the narration.

[u/Morgus_Magnificent]

It actually kind of annoys me that I never considered using the peel in lemonade. It's so obvious.

But I love how he takes it a step further and macerates the peel in sugar.