An easy trick to keep your lemons fresh

Lemons are a versatile fruit for adding flavor and citrusy zing to your dishes or juicing them to make delicious homemade lemonade and other tangy beverages. The beautiful vivid yellow of their skin can also look gorgeous as part of an Instagram perfect fruit bowl to decorate your kitchen.

However, lest you want those lemons to go to waste, leaving them out for more than a few days will leave you with dried out or mushy fruit. Furthermore, if they are stored on the counter near to foods that emit ethylene gas or are in direct sunlight, they will lose their freshness even faster.

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An easy trick to keep your lemons fresh

When you purchase lemons, you want to avoid those that are bruised, scared or have soft spots. The ideal fresh lemon is bright yellow and will be firm but have a little give when gently squeezed.

However, they are usually shipped while still green, so if you have some that still look a little unripe, you can leave them out on the counter until they reach their full potential. But after that you’ll want to take steps to keep them as fresh as possible for as long as possible.

This means putting them in the refrigerator, ideally in a crisper drawer inside a sealed container. You will also want to keep them away or protected from ethylene producers. While the cool temps inside your fridge will help slow down the production of ethylene they won’t be completely spared from the gas that will cause them to ripen faster.

The optimum storage conditions for lemons according to the Michigan State University Extension is 50-55ºF and with a relative humidity of 85-90%. With that you should be able to store them for between 30 and 180 days, or one to six months.

Another recommendation is putting your lemons in a large jar filled with water and then storing them in the fridge. It’s claimed that they can be kept fresh using this method for up to three months.

If you just have too many lemons, not enough space in the fridge or you know you won’t get through them all, you can consider freezing them either whole, cut up or as juice and zest. Know that if you freeze lemons, the flavor won’t be the same as a fresh lemon and they will be mushy when defrosted if put in whole or cut up. They can stay in the freezer for up to four months

If you cut them up, freeze the wedges on a tray first so that they don’t get stuck together in the bag. Likewise for lemon juice, use an ice cube tray to make smaller portions that you can pull out as needed.