Homemade Lemonade Concentrate

Homemade Lemonade Concentrate

Lemonade will always be a favorite summertime drink for me. I make it plain or sometimes with berries added. I like the convenience of those frozen lemonade concentrates, but I prefer using fresh squeezed lemon juice.  I started making my own concentrate a few years ago when I got a whole case of lemons from a friend. I juiced the lemons  and froze much of the juice just plain. There was still a lot of juice.  I decided I might as well try to make some lemonade concentrate, too. I went to the store and read the ingredients on several brands of frozen lemonade concentrate. High fructose corn syrup and concentrated lemon juice. Well I decided that wasn’t going to work for me so I did something radical. I stirred some sugar together with lemon juice until the sugar dissolved.  There didn’t seem to be much point in adding water- that would defeat the purpose of it being a concentrate. Then I just froze the juice/sugar mixture.

Sometimes I freeze a whole batch together either in a plastic container or in a Ziploc bag.  I also froze some of this lemonade mix in ice cube trays. That way once frozen I could pop the cubes into bags and just take out what I needed at the time. I’ll often add some lemon zest, too. Don’t toss all that zest, either. If you are going to be juicing a lot of lemon just for the juice, zest them first- and freeze or dry the zest for later use.

Well here is the recipe for my lemonade concentrate.

Homemade Lemonade Concentrate

1 1/3 c. lemon juice- fresh or bottled

1 c. sugar*

lemon zest, optional

Combine ingredients and stir until sugar is dissolved. Freeze until ready to use. Makes a little over 1 1/2 cups. To use: combine three parts water to one part  concentrate.

* You can use honey instead of sugar- but only use 1/2 c. honey as it is much sweeter than sugar.