How To Zest A Lemon

Welcome to Cooking Lesson #3 in my ‘How-To’ series. In this “episode”, I will teach you how to zest a lemon. This skill is transferable to other citrus fruits, including Limes and Oranges.

Once we zest properly we can use it in many recipes, Like adding some aroma on top of a salad, making a lemon cake by adding zest to a white simple cake recipe, or even transforming the everyday chicken breast by adding lemon zest into the marinade!

The best way to get zest is by using a Citrus Zester. This tool makes sure we will only get the green/yellow part of the lemon. Before we begin, please remember to NOT GRATE THE WHITE PART. The white part of the fruit contains all the bitterness and we don’t want this in our dishes.

INSTRUCTIONS


1. One hand holds the Lemon and the other holds the Citrus Zester.

2. You must move the lemon in one direction and the lemon zester in another in one movement only, rotating as you go. You’ll end up with thin and small pieces

NOTE: If you only have a regular cheese grater, you can make the same movement but softly to make sure we won’t get the white part. Do not rotate the lemon back and forth. Once you do, you may grate the same spot twice or three times, and by doing this it will probably get the bitter white part.

For a bigger piece of zest, we must use a vegetable peeler and peel the lemon the same way we peel a potato. Once again: be careful to peel only the yellow/green part.I’m looking forward to seeing your recipes using lemon zest! Share on social media with Hashtag, #Jadescookingtips.