Zesting a Lemon

I love lemon.

I started to add more to that sentence but then realized that those 3 words summed up what I wanted to say :)

If you need to zest a lemon for a recipe, or to jazz up salad dressing, or just because zesting is fun - there are a couple easy ways to go about it. The simplest way is to use a handy little tool that has holes on one end that you scrape down the sides of a lemon to remove the peel (I'm pretty sure it's called a "zester"...a somewhat obvious name...); or you can use a vegetable peeler to peel strips of lemon and then finely slice the peel with a sharp knife. Either way, be careful to only remove the top colored part of the peel - the white pith under the skin is bitter and you want to avoid using that part.

Same goes for grating the lemon peel - you can use a hand grater or microplaner to remove the peel but be careful to not grate too much off, just the colored part. You can use other citrus fruit peels the same way - oranges and limes are great additions to many dishes, and lots of times I'll use one or the other in place of lemon.

one year ago: net wrapped mason jar
two years ago: LeDonna's fabulous rhubarb pie