Lemons are one of the few – or perhaps one of two – fruits whose peel is as valuable as their juicy flesh. Lemon zest is one of the quickest ways to add the essence of sunshine to your dish, but sometimes you don’t need juice and zest at the same time, and you can get those asynchronous moments with a slew of lemon zest that you haven’t yet used up. Fortunately, they freeze well.
I don’t know why this never crossed my mind – I love freezing things (like ginger, for example) – but I’m glad someone thought of it. Reddit user ehp29 was recently deleted this tip in r / EatCheapAndHealthy, a subreddit devoted – as you can probably imagine – to cheap and healthy eating:
I sometimes find that I only need a touch of lemon peel for a dish and I don’t have to go to the store and buy a whole lemon that I only use a little bit of.
So when I use fresh lemon juice in a dish, I put the leftover peel in the freezer and pull out the peel to grate it into pieces if necessary. Lemon peel doesn’t really affect the texture of a dish, so it doesn’t matter if it freezes well. Just the zest of a lemon should be enough for some dishes so that it doesn’t take up much space in the freezer.
The same would probably work with orange or lime, I just find lemon peel is the most common. I love it in baked goods and oatmeal.
This is a smart move for two reasons – one obvious and the other less so. The obvious thing is that the freezer will stop the lemon peel from decaying so you can use it at a later time when it’s needed. The less obvious one is that rubbing juiced lemon peel is annoying – they’re all soft and flabby – and freezing them tightens them a little, which makes them easier to taste. So next time you’re making lemonade or any other dish or drink that requires a range of lemon juice, toss the pods in a freezer bag and toss them in the old freezer. In the future, you will be very glad you did.
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