So what do you do when you get a whole bunch of lemons and you don't know what to do with them all? Maybe you've got them from your friends or your neighbors or maybe you have a tree in your backyard that just is exploding with lemons. Wonderful, right? But what do you do with them so that you don't go to waste and you can give them away? We can do things with them. Anyway, so I'm going to show you today about four different things you can do to help preserve them so they last a bit longer. I'm Rock and Robin and I'm going to show you all my little tips right after this. All right, I'm going to start off with a little chef joke. So why did the lemon go out with the prune? Because she couldn't find a date. So the lemons I have here today, a couple of them I went out and I have a little tree in my yard and it has a few lemons on it. So I went and picked those. They are my own lemons and you can see those right here. They are beautiful, beautiful color and then the rest of the lemons here are from the store and they're organic and you can see they're a different color. That's probably because they're a different variation. It didn't really say what they were. But anyway, you want to start off, take them and give them a nice rinse. So first off, let's say you want to just keep your lemons as they are and store them for as long as you can. Well, just place them into a ziplock bag and zip it up and just place them in your fridge. That will keep the moisture in and they will last a good week. So here's the first thing you can do in preserving your lemons as long as possible. Get a zester or a microplane like this and you're going to zest your lemon. Make sure it's organic because that's where all the pesticides go. And so you want to not go too deep. You just want to get the lemon oils. These are wonderful in lots of different dishes. You can add this to just about anything you want a little bit of lemon flavor to. You just go along and I have a little mason jar here and I'm just going to zest it and the zest will fall right in there pretty much. And then you don't want to pack it in. That's key because we'll put this in the freezer and when you want to go use it then all you do is just scoop out a little bit and add it to your dish. And this will keep probably about a month in the freezer and maybe longer if you have one of those really cold freezers. Now, after you're done zesting a lemon, let's say you want to keep the lemon whole right? Well, once it's zested, it has lost its protection to keep moisture in dramatically. So you're going to want to take some saran wrap and wrap this very tightly and then place it in the refrigerator and it might be good for another day or two. Maybe three. But if you don't do that then it's just going to dry out really quickly and very fast. Once you zest your lemons you have a couple of choices now for tip number two. You can either juice these or you can slice them up and freeze the slices. Now for slicing them up you might want to slice up these pieces, place them on a parchment paper covered tray like I have here, little baking sheet with a rim on it and place them in the freezer. And once they're frozen I'll put them in a ziplock bag and then they can be used for any time you want sliced lemon maybe for some fish dish or you want to add it to a drink that you might have. It's already cold and frozen so it adds some coolness to your drink so it's great. Those are just a couple of different options. So just cut your lemons in half if you want to do juice and put them in a lemon press like this and squeeze away. Here is my ice cube tray that's what I like to freeze the juice in so that I have an idea of how much juice I'm using. So each one of my little cubes is about two tablespoons so I just fill it up. I might want one tablespoon or I might want two depending on what I'm using it for. So like if I want to add some lemon juice to my water I might use a whole cube and if I just want to splash I might fill up some of these just halfway. So for my last tip on preserving lemons we're actually going to be preserving these. So we're going to take our lemons and we're going to cut them, I'm going to hold them on end vertically. I'm going to cut an X through the top of them but not all the way through so they kind of stay attached at the bottom. And then I'm going to add some salt about a tablespoon to each one on the inside and we're going to do that in a mason jar. So I'm going to hold it over the mason jar. Hopefully the salt will just fall in the bottom and we're going to place the lemons in there. We're going to kind of close them back up and we're going to stuff them in the jar. This is like fermenting like when you make sauerkraut. So when you get the jar pretty full you're going to smash down the lemons pretty tight. Then you're going to add any spices that you want to add. So I'm going to add a few peppercorns to this and maybe a bay leaf. I'll stick one of those in there. And then we're going to fill this with water. And you want to make sure that your lemons are covered in water. And I'll put a lid on this and it's going to sit on the counter for three to four weeks room temperature. After that it goes in the refrigerator. And you can give this a little shake if you want to just kind of flip it over and that way you'll distribute the salt. Now you can buy preserved lemons in the store in a jar, you know, just like this but you can make your own if you have a lot of lemons. And so these will be done in like I said about three to four weeks and you'll know when they're done when the skin, the peel is very soft. Now I don't have an example to show you but the part that you're actually going to be using is the peel. The peel is going to become very tender and easy to chew and very flavorful. It doesn't have that really tart flavor to it. It's very nice to use. You can chop it up easily and chew it easily, put it in your salads, put it in any recipes, stews, sauces, all kinds of things. And like I said once it goes in the refrigerator, it's good for about a year in your refrigerator. So let me show you an example of how we're going to use the lemon. So when it's ready, you're going to take a lemon out and you're going to rinse it under cold water to remove all of the salt. Then you're going to slice it where you're separating the peel from the pulp. And then all you have to do is slice the peel up into nice little pieces. And remember, it'll be very tender and soft. And then you're going to add this to any dish you want. Now for my last tip, I'm going to move into, I've got these leftover pieces of lemon that I've squeezed. So I'm just going to place them into a microwave safe dish, fill it with about a cup of water. And we're going to place it in the microwave. I'll put it in there for about five minutes. Your microwave is going to become nice and clean. Now don't think it's going to come out clean all by itself. You will have to use a towel and wipe it out. But it makes the job a lot easier. And it's going to smell wonderful. So if you like lemon recipes, I have a playlist for you of all lemon recipes. And I'm going to leave a link for you right over here. Click that and you'll see all the lemon recipes that I have going from ice cream all the way to some pasta dishes. You're going to love it. Thank you for watching today. If you enjoyed the video, give me a thumbs up. Share this video if you think someone might enjoy it. And don't forget to subscribe. Thanks again. We'll see you next time.