Life Hands Paul Lemons
You might not know it, but I am married to Paul, cook extraordinaire. I like to play at baking, occasionally popping out a nice pavlova or a delicious crumb cake, but Paul really cooks. He makes dinners, breakfasts, breads, and ice cream. And, occasionally, he makes me my favorite drink ever — lemonade.
See, I’m obsessed with lemonade, and very very particular about it. If you handed me a Snapple lemonade or a Nestea lemonade, I might just wing the bottle at you. I will visit the Cheesecake Factory solely to sample their lemonade. I get excited at the idea of going to ballgames or the boardwalk when I think about the delicious lemonade/funnel cake future ahead of me! A good lemonade needs a tartness that doesn’t come with heavily manufactured and bottled drinks which are all sugar-y.
So, when Paul first started his lemonade making scheme, I was solidly behind it. The idea of homemade lemonade sitting in my fridge waiting for my consumption was too good to be true. And his first attempts were good, but not fantastic. Sorry, Paul. And then… he took a break after we had Nathan.
Recently, he’s started making lemonade again, and, then, one day, he made the perfect lemonade. I probably drank about four glasses of it in one day. I don’t know what happened to make it perfect, but it happened. Since then, he’s made it several times, due to the summery weather, the beauty of lemons, and… to be honest, my begging.
You start with a whole bunch of lemons. Paul likes to get six and can easily assign me this task at the grocery store. (I’m sometimes a failure at determining which fruits and vegetables are delicious and which are horribly old and yucky.)
After a quick wash, he zests the rinds right off those suckers, into a big pile in a saucepan. You don’t have to use a microplane, if you don’t have one. Paul offers that you can use a peeler, but try to avoid getting any of the bitter white pith. You only want yellow stuff in that saucepan. (In our house, we have a microplane, and I, at least, advocate its use. It’s easier to clean than many a kitchen utensil.)
Add one cup of sugar to the lemon rind.
Then add a cup of water and bring to a simmer.
While the lemon rind steeps for approximately ten minutes, cut the lemons in half and juice them. Paul uses a potato ricer to juice lemons into our quart measuring cup, but I’ve seen America’s Test Kitchen say that those in need can use a simple fork. So, your choice! Six lemons should give you a cup or more of lemon juice. If you have less, you’ve got to start getting slightly bigger lemons.
Then, he pours the lemon juice into our pitcher. It’s pretty big, he estimates that it’s about a gallon and a half sized pitcher, but you could get away with something about one gallon sized. Hey, conveniently the measuring cup is empty! Now, he adds one pound of ice (measured on a food scale because Paul likes to be exact) to the quart measuring cup. Then, he pours the steeped liquid through a strainer over the ice in the measuring cup. That will cool down the liquid so it’s delicious right away. Add that steeped liquid and ice to the lemon juice in the pitcher. Now, you can add more water until you reach your ideal tartness setting. We favor eleven more cups, but I will warn you that I like a tart lemonade.
Once you get the tartness to your ideal levels, add sugar to reach your ideal sweetness. We usually add about another half a cup of sugar.
So, all told, that is (for us):
6 lemons worth of lemon rind
Approximately 1 cup of lemon juice
1 1/2 cups of sugar
Twelve cups of water
