A staple of Moroccan cooking, this flavour-bomb ingredient is traditionally created when lemons are salted, stored, and allowed to mature in the fullness of time (three weeks as a minimum). Making them via this traditional method is, admittedly, not especially ‘lemon difficult‘ – the difficulty arises in remembering to make them sufficiently in advance of when you want to use them.
For the average Moroccan, primed to have this ingredient available whenever they may be needed, patience and forethought is not an issue. For the rest of us, less attuned to having them to hand, it might mean a trip to the supermarket to buy an industrially produced, slightly medicinal tasting, shelf-ready variety that is, frankly, nearly always a disappointment.
And there is good reason to preserve – the process takes away the tough, puckering sour of the peel, leaving a subtler, softer tartness devoid of the bitter roughness of the raw fruit and enhancing the citrus with a powerful, lemony, sea-salty ‘umami’, and provides an ingredient that can be used in salads, stews, desserts – or almost any recipe where salt and lemon might enhance with their special extra layer of flavour.
The method we have here is a ‘cheat’ for those in a hurry. Vacuum sealing and cooking the lemons at a precise temperature through the medium of steam accelerates what nature will do over time. It concentrates the flavours and the process and, while it might not be for purists, for those who lack time and have the right equipment available, it’s a lemon ‘no-brainer’!
RECIPE:
Ingredients:
- Lemons (unwaxed)
- Sea Salt (10g for each 100g lemons)
Method:
- Wash the lemons and cut into quarters lengthways
- Weigh the lemon quarters, calculate the amount of salt that you will need.
- Add the lemons and salt to an appropriately sized vacuum sealing bag, distribute ingredients as evenly as possible, and vacuum seal at full pressure, and full sealing capacity.
- Preheat the steam oven to 85ºC steam – place the vacuum sealed lemons in their vacuum bags onto a perforated oven tray and cook for 60 minutes.
- Remove from the oven, dry the outsides of the bags, allow to cool – preferably chill down quickly, either in an ice bath or a blast chiller (NB: don’t use a fridge to try and cool down very hot things!).
- The lemons are ready for use immediately or store them in the fridge where their flavour will continue to improve.
Bonus recipe: preserved lemon shortbread
@alisoneroman provides a super delicious salty lemon shortbread recipe here, from her book ‘Sweet Enough’ (subtitle: ‘desserts for people who don’t do dessert’). If you feel inclined to put this normally savoury ingredient to a counterintuitive use you could do worse than make these with your preserved lemons – be bold – the salt enhances the sweet!
If you have the patience, you can also watch Alison prepare and bake them in one of her You Tube Home Movie segments (linked in her recipe) – this one featuring a sometimes shirtless, and always eager to perform for the camera, apprentice – entirely yours to decide if the sidekick enhances or detracts from the learning or the entertainment.
As a final note, if you tag @alisoneroman and @day_true on Instagram in any pictures of your efforts, we will be sure to celebrate with you!
“Sorry, I do want you to do this, but I also want it to be right …” ~Alison Roman
