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Preserved Lemons

Lemons packed in nothing but their own juice and salt for a month, where the salt is the only thing keeping them safe.

Vegan.

Ingredients

Method

  1. THEY MUST STAY UNDER THE LIQUID FOR THE WHOLE MONTH. Any piece of peel sitting proud of the juice will grow mould, and mould in the jar means the batch is finished -- it cannot be scraped off and the rest used. Push them down every few days, and top up with fresh lemon juice rather than water if the level drops.
  2. THE SALT IS NOT SEASONING, IT IS THE PRESERVATIVE. Roughly a fifth of the weight of the fruit, packed into the cuts and layered between them. Reduced because it looks like a lot, the brine is too weak and the jar spoils. This is the one quantity here that is not a matter of taste.
  3. AND IT IS ONLY THE PEEL THAT IS USED AT THE END. The flesh is rinsed away and thrown out -- it has gone soft and ferociously salty. Anyone adding a whole preserved lemon to a dish has ruined it.
  4. Lemons scrubbed under hot water. Thin-skinned fruit is far better here; a thick pith stays bitter.
  5. Each lemon cut lengthways into quarters BUT NOT THROUGH -- stopped about 1 cm from the base so it opens like a flower and stays in one piece.
  6. A tablespoon of salt packed into the cuts of each, pressing it against the flesh.
  7. A layer of salt in the base of the jar. Lemons packed in one at a time, pressed down HARD with a wooden spoon so they give up their juice, with more salt between each layer.
  8. The jar filled to the top. By the time the last lemon is in, the juice released should nearly cover them.
  9. Topped up with fresh lemon juice until they are completely submerged. A small sterilised jar or a folded strip of baking paper wedged under the lid keeps them down.
  10. Sealed and left at room temperature for the first week, turned upside down once a day to move the salt about.
  11. Then somewhere cool and dark FOR A MONTH. The peel goes translucent and soft and the juice thickens slightly.
  12. To use: a quarter lifted out, the flesh scraped away and discarded, the peel rinsed and chopped. They keep a year in the fridge once opened.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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