Life giving you lemons? Here’s how to preserve them

Love a preserved lemon but don’t love the price tag that comes with them? Enter the art of home preserving. Like pickles, a preserve is super easy to throw together – no clever cooking skills required! If you want to add preserved lemons to all your salads, pastas, and even sprinkly it over your smashed avo all year-round, give this how-to a crack this weekend.

Note: although it’ll take you less than ten minutes to prepare, you’ll need to ready your preserve a month in advance. Good things come to those who wait. For a slightly quicker batch, you can slice your lemons thinly and check on them in about two and a half weeks.

You’ll need

• One small jar with a good, sealable lid (cleaned very well)
• Enough lemons to fill your chosen jar, with extra for juicing (for a small jar, around 6 lemons)
• A big handful of sea salt

How to preserve lemons

1. It’s too easy, mate. Layer the bottom of your jar with a sprinkling of sea salt.
2. Quarter the lemons your filling your jar with.
3. Layer the quarters inside your jar, putting a sprinkling of salt between each quarter.
4. Compress the layers, so that they’re squeezed into your jar – and give the top layer a little extra salt.
5. Fill all remaining spaces with the juice of the remaining lemons. You want to make sure it’s all covered and that no lemon is peaking out the top where it’s exposed to air.
6. Seal your lid (write down the date you made them!), put your jar in the pantry and open in a month’s time!

Yes, really. That’s it. If there was a more apt time to call something easy peasy lemon squeezey, we’d like to hear it.