Preserved Citrus

Ingredients

At least ½ cup kosher salt, or more as needed

At least 4 lemons or citrus fruits of any kind, but you can use as many as you have, as long as they fit in your jar.

An additional 1 to 3 lemons, for juice (peel or zest first and save for infusing booze or flavoring stews), or more as needed to cover your citrus

Directions

Find a wide-mouth glass jar that has a lid and will hold all your fruit. Bring some water to a boil and pour it into the jar to sterilize (or use your cleaning/sterilizing method of choice-Vivian Howard suggests running your jar through the dishwasher in This Will Make It Taste Good), then emptyit out again. Pour a thin layer of kosher salt into the bottom of the jar.

Wash and lightly scrub your lemons. One by one, stand each lemon on its end and cut it into quarters lengthwise, but don't cut all the way down. The idea is for the lemon quarters to open up like the petals of a flower with the stem end still attached. Sprinkle a tablespoon of kosher salt in the center (a bit less for tiny limes, a bit more for gargantuan grapefruits) and rub it all over the inside, then close the lemon back up and put it in the jar, pressing down with a spoon to release the juice and squash the citrus down. The more you can squish the lemons down, the less juice you'il need at the end to cover. Top the lemon with another spoonful or two of salt, then repeat the process until the jar is full. Add any spices you like, then squeeze the additional lemons over the jar until the juice covers everything (a bit of peel sticking up is OK--it'll collapse over time). Seal the jar up and swish it a few times to distribute the liquid.

Place the jar somewhere relatively cool and dark, but prominent enough that you'll walk by every few days and turn the jar upside down (place it in a larger jar or bucket if you're worried about it leaking) and then back the next time you see it. You can let the lemons continue to cure at room tem perature, but I usually move it to the fridge after a few weeks.

The preserved lemons are ready once the rinds are tender and lightly translucent, but the longer you leave them, the better the flavor. Typically, you'll want at least a month to get to the best texture. When using, you Cal rinse to remove some salt and scrape away the bitter pith, or just use as l.

Add the minced rind to savory recipes like Anything-in-thc-Kitchen Pasta (page 68) or Any-Bean Dip (page 306), make dressing (scc the box below), and put the pulp in broths or braises. They'll keep basically indefiniteiy in the fridge.

Notes

Source: Perfectly Good Food, by Margaret Li and Irene Li

I hate running out of fresh lemons and limes. Not having a burst offresh citrus when you want it for a dish (or a drink, if you have a dedicated cocktail maker in the house) feels like an easily preventable tragedy, so I buy large bags of lemons and limes to save money and shopping time. Sometimes, though, they start to pile up and I start to regret my bulk- buying habits and wish for a way to remove all the citrus from my fridge at once and start over. Luckily, there are these fantastic flavor-boosting, tart-and-citrusy, sweet-and-savory bits of magic called preserved lemons, a staple of North African cuisine, and you can work this particular alchemy on any citrus taking up space in your fridge.

After 15 minutes of work and a few weeks of hanging around, you'll have spectacularly bright and tangy cured citrus fruits for adding to salads, making sauces, mixing into pasta, tossing onto fried things, and putting in my favorite tagine. There are plenty of different methods and flavor combinations with spices like black peppercorns, bay leaves, cinnamon, and cardamom. I like to keep it simple, but go for any variation you like. And for those of you who haven't preserved citrus before, don't worry-it's honestly pretty hard to get this “wrong." There isn't an exact ratio of 1 lemon to salt, so don't fret about amounts. If yours are extra salty when you take them out, you can rinse them before eating, but I rarely do.