7 tips that you should know when you cook with lemons

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Ask any serious cook what their basic essentials are when they're in the kitchen, and there's a good chance that lemons will be high on the list. Whether it's to add a little tang to a sauce, use as a base for a salad dressing or grate some peel into baked goods, lemon is one of those ingredients that has so many uses, it's practically indispensable.
But one of the things that makes lemons so great is their sour, and sometimes slightly bitter, flavor. Those same tastes can really ruin a dish if you don't know how to use a lemon just right. Now you can add the zesty taste of lemon to any dish and never worry about it being ruined because you'll have these tips to follow!
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1. Use lemons to spritz salads and other foods
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Just a light spritz of lemon juice on salads, bitter greens and other foods can make all the difference. But it can be a real hassle to squeeze out all those lemons, remove the seeds and then place the juice into a spray bottle just to get that lovely mist.
Instead, save yourself all that work and simply remove the nozzle from a small spray bottle. Remember, you don't want the tube any longer than the lemon itself or it will just spray air onto your food. Cut one end off the lemon and insert the tube right into the center, making sure that the top spray sits on top of the lemon so it doesn't fold over onto itself when squeezed. Then just start misting and spritzing wherever you want to add just a bit of lemon.
2. Use everything but the seeds
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Another thing that makes lemons so great is that you can use nearly the entire fruit. The zest is great for things like baked goods that you don't want to add too much liquid to, and the juice is great for things like sauces that would turn that zest gray or black. While it may seem like the entire fruit can be used, there's one part of it that should never make it into a dish -- the seeds.
Of course, no one would keep the seeds in a sauce or salad dressing because no one wants to break a tooth when they crunch down on them. But too many people half a lemon and then place both cut pieces into the cavity of a whole chicken or place them around a roast. While this can be a great way to add flavor to a dish, if the seeds remain inside the fruit they'll impart a bitter flavor. Always pick seeds out before adding halved lemons to anything.
3. Know when to use bottled and when to use the real thing
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We're not here to preach about how fresh lemon juice is always better than the bottled stuff. Sometimes it's not. But there definitely is a time and a place to use each. If you're simply trying to stop apple slices from turning brown or you're sanitizing your beautiful wood cutting board that can't go in the dishwasher, by all means, use bottled lemon juice. Here you're not using the juice for its actual flavor but for its other properties such as its acid.
But if you're adding it to a dish where the lemon flavor really needs to sing, such as chicken piccata, go for the real thing. It really makes a world of difference.
4. Take it easy when adding it to dairy
So we just talked about how much acid lemons have and how it's great for so many things. But sometimes, that acid can really work against you, like when you're adding it to any type of dairy. When the acid of the lemon mixes with the dairy, it causes the curd and whey to separate, causing your dish to curdle. To prevent this from happening, add just a little bit of juice to your dish -- if you need a bigger punch of lemon flavor, add zest along with the juice. Zest will never curdle dairy, so you can be as heavy-handed with it as you'd like.
5. Take dishes off the heat before adding lemon
Heat is another element of cooking that also curdles sauces and other dishes, which is a great reason to take the dish off the heat before adding any type of lemon (juice or zest) to it. But there's another reason: When lemon is cooked for too long it can quickly turn bitter, and because it's such a powerful ingredient, that bitterness will spread throughout the entire dish.
6. Zest only once
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You can zest the entire lemon, but the key is to only run the lemon over the microplane or other zester just once, over one spot. Too many people take the zest off and then continue to run that same area of lemon over the zester or microplane. This is unnecessary. The zest is already off, so it's not adding anymore to it. Instead, all you'll get after zesting that one area of lemon is the pith. The pith of any citrus fruit is bitter and, again, that bitterness can work its way through the entire dish. So use a light hand when zesting lemons, and only zest in one place one time.
7. Don't zest too early
A lot of people like to gather and measure every single ingredient in a recipe before actually starting to cook the dish. It's a good kitchen tip and can make cooking more seamless and organized. But this should never be done with lemon zest. That's because it's the essential oils in lemon zest that make it so beautiful and perfect for dishes. When a bunch of zest is taken off and left to sit on the counter, those oils quickly evaporate into the air, and while that might make your kitchen smell heavenly, there won't be anything left for the dish.
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If you want your zest to be ready or make sure you don't forget about it, leave a whole lemon alongside a microplane with your other ingredients and only zest when you absolutely have to. Everything you need will still be within arm's reach, but you won't lose any of that delightful flavor.
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