6 Easy Lemon Hacks You Can Use in the Kitchen

Lemons have several uses, and they’re not just food-related. There also exists several techniques for the best way to juice and preserve lemons. Check out these easy lemon hacks below to start using lemons in better ways:

1. Get Rid of Odor on Hands

Lemon juice will help neutralize odors from pungent foods, like onions and garlic. After handling items that leave your hands smelling stinky, wash hands in a mixture of lemon juice and water.

2. For Maximum Freshness, Store Lemons in Bags in the Fridge

An experiment by America’s Test Kitchen found that the best approach to keeping lemons fresh is to seal them in a zipper lock bag and refrigerate. All the lemons stored at room temperature hardened after a week. The uncovered lemons, which we kept in the crisper drawer, began to lose a small amount of moisture after the first week, and 5 percent of their weight in the following weeks. Then, the lemons stored in zipper-lock bags, both with and without water, didn’t begin to dehydrate until four weeks had passed.

3. Roll Before You Cut to Make Juicing Easier

When you want to get the lemon juice out of the lemon, roll it on the counter or cutting board before cutting into it. Then, pick it up with your hand and press on it slightly. This will help you squeeze out more juice easily.

4. Squeeze Up, Not Down

When you place your lemon half over the bowl to be squeezed for juice, do not squeeze it with the pulp side down. Instead, squeeze it with the pulp side facing you, so that the seeds do not fall into the juice. The juice will still fall into the bowl and run down.

5. Use Lemon Shells to Keep Food Fresher Longer

If you cut a lemon and squeeze all of its juice out, don’t throw away the shell. Instead, freeze it in a zipper-lock bag. Use it later to keep peeled apples, potatoes, or artichokes fresh. The shell has enough juice and acidity to keep the food from turning brown!

6. Save Extra Juice to Protect Hair

After you squeeze a lemon for your dinner, save that extra lemon juice for a rejuvenating, natural hair mask. Make a concoction in your kitchen that you could eat: combine coconut oil, lemon and grapefruit in this scalp treatment from The Mother Huddle. This will help remove product buildup, relieve dry, flaky skin and stimulate the scalp to encourage hair growth.

If all of this talk about lemons is making you hungry for a refreshing dish, check out these 24 Fresh Vegan Recipes for Lemon Lovers and these other lemon recipes.

Image source: Johannes Pribyl/Wikimedia