Can You Freeze Lemons?

Lemons can be used in your party drinks, or your cakes, but if you’ve not need for a whole lemon it might put you off adding just the zest or the juice of half a lemon to your recipes, or providing lemon wedges for drinks at parties, as you don’t want to waste the remainder of the lemon.

Some people might think this an odd question – but that’s because, maybe, their life is filled with using lemons quickly and easily – for many people, using a lemon is a one off occasion.  Typically you might find a recipe at Christmas that needs 1-2 lemons, yet the shops sell them in nets, or they are as cheap in a net for 6-8 as buying 1-2 separately…. which then gives you the dilemma of how on earth you’ll use up the other lemons.

Of course, there are tons of ways to use up lemons, but those might not fit your lifestyle, or not fit it right now.  So then you wonder if it’s possible to freeze lemons.

The short answer is: Yes, you can freeze whole lemons, or even slices.  So that leads us to the next question:

How Do You Freeze Lemons?

Luckily, it’s super easy!  Just place lemon slices, halves, or even whole lemons into a freezer bag.  Put the bag into the freezer. That’s it!  When you want to use them they will come out perfect again, except that you might find the peel is a bit softer.

You might like to think about how you might plan to use them in the future.  e.g. you could grate the peel off, to give yourself the zest for putting into cakes, leaving the flesh of the lemon for other uses

So, what can you do with these lemons you’ve now bought and frozen?

What to do With Leftover Lemons:

Keeping it simple, here are some quick leftover lemon ideas – nothing hard or unusual:

• You can stick a lemon, or half a lemon, inside a chicken cavity before roasting; ideally defrosted (which you can do in a microwave, or leave the frozen lemon overnight in the fridge).  I say to defrost the lemon as it’s imperative that the inside of a chicken cooks thoroughly and having something frozen shoved up there gives it less chance to do so.
• Use lemons to line the bottom of a slow cooker or crockpot if you’re roasting a chicken in the pot.
• Use lemons when you randomly find a great “how to clean things with a lemon” article online 🙂
• Leave them in the freezer all year and use them for whatever you last bought the lemons for 🙂

Yes, it’s possible to find 100 more complex ways of using up leftover lemons you’ve frozen, but as everybody’s different, I’ll leave that up to you if you don’t like the ideas above!