I love my lemon tree! I use the lemons for simple things like adding a slice to my water or for more complicated baking like gluten free lemon bars. This year I needed to preserve my lemons in the freezer. I froze lemon slices and lemon juice. I looked into canning options as well from the Ball complete Book of Home Preserving (a must have for any home canner) but the one recipe that sounded really good was either the lemonade or strawberry lemonade concentrate but they had too much sugar for me. The best part about preserving lemons in the freezer is you do not have to have a large amount of lemons. You can use these methods even if you have just one or two extra lemons from a bag you bought at the store.
Lemon Tree Issues
I normally leave my lemons on the tree for as long as I can. I love being able to go outside and grab a lemon whenever I want a lemon in my water. My Tree came with my home when we purchased it and I think it is about 6 years old. This past winter we had a lot of rain…well above average for almost the entire state. I noticed that some of my lemons were getting brown spots on them. These is caused by brown rot most likely due to the large amount of rain splashing infected soil onto the tree.
To mitigate the spread and to salvage what i could I removed all of the lemons from my tree. I kept any lemon with out the brown rot for preserving in the freezer and all others went into the green bin to go out with the trash. I will also be pruning the bottom of the lemon tree to clear space between the soil and the lemon tree.
Freezing Lemons
When freezing lemons the first thing to ask yourself is what do you use your lemons for: Baking? Cooking? Lemonade? Lemon slices in water? This will help you decide the best method for freezing your lemons.
Freezing Whole Lemons
If you want to be able to use the juice and the lemon zest for baking or cooking then you can freeze the entire lemon whole. If you freeze the lemon whole then you can zest it while it is frozen and then juice it once it thaws out. To freeze a whole lemon you simply place the lemon in the freezer. Once frozen you can place the frozen lemons in a bag for safe keeping.
Freezing Lemon Slices
Freezing lemon slices is one of my favorite ways to preserve lemons in the freezer. These are great to pull out to put a slice in your water or add to a large drink dispenser for flavored water or fancy drink. I have the 1 Gallon Glass Mason Jar Dispenser that I love for this. The floating lemon slices look so pretty in lemonade, water or iced tea. Another great used for frozen lemon slices is for cooking. They are great to take directly from the freezer and place on fish before cooking. When the lemon slices freeze the break the membrane walls so as it defrosts or cooks you get more juice coming out of it compared to fresh.
How to Freeze Lemon Slices
- Wash the lemons. Remember you are going to be using these lemons directly in a drink or to cook with so you want to make sure they are clean.
- Slice the lemons about 1/4 of an inch per slice.
- Use a baking sheet and place a piece of parchment paper down. This will help you release the lemons from the baking sheet after they are frozen. My favorite parchment paper is the pre cut sheets by If You Care. They fit perfectly on my baking sheets so I don’t have to mess with cutting the sheets all crooked. Then Place a single layer of lemons on the sheet.
- Place the baking sheet in the freezer for 12 hours.
- Once the lemons are completely frozen. Remove from the freezer and peel them off of the parchment paper. Then place them in a freezer bag and place back in the freezer for storage. Now grab whenever you need a lemon slice!
Freezing Lemon Juice
The next method of preserving lemons in the freezer is to freeze lemon juice. Frozen lemon juice is great for cooking, for making lemonade, and lemon ice cubes. For cooking, you can freeze lemon juice in pre-portioned sizes. I normally freeze is small portions unless you have recipes that call for a large amount of lemon juice such as for baking lemon bars or for making lemonade. For example, my favorite lemon bar recipe is by Paleo Running Mamma and it calls for 1/2 a cup of lemon juice. I use my Prep Works Freezer Pods or an ice cube tray for freezing lemon juice depending on the size I need. This time I chose to use my ice cube tray because I wanted to add to my water or have on hand for making my sinus remedy which uses 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.
How to Freeze Lemon Juice
- Wash Lemons
- Slice Lemons and Juice them. There are many ways to juice a lemon. I normally use a simple manual hand juicer or I just squeeze the lemon. Make sure to remove any seeds.
- Pour the lemon juice into either your freezer pods, ice cube trays, or other freezer safe container.
- Put lemon juice in freezer.
Preserving Lemons in the Freezer
Preserving Lemons in the freezer is very versatile and allows you to have fresh lemons or lemon juice on hand whenever you need. Many times it is cheaper to buy a bag of lemons then just a few and this is a great way to save you some money. I love hearing for you. If you have any questions please post them in the comments. If you enjoyed this post please pin and share.
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