If you haven’t yet tried preserved lemons, now is the time.  Primarily used in Moroccan cooking, this unique salty citrus flavour quickly makes an amazing dish out of chicken or fish and adds lift to sautéed vegetables or beans.  This recipe has only two ingredients, so choose them wisely.  Organic lemons are the only ones I ever use for preserving as the rind will have less junk (pesticides, etc.) on it.

Ingredients: 

• 12 organic lemons
• coarse Kosher salt

Directions:

1. Scrub the lemons under running water with a vegetable or nail brush to get the rind nice and clean.  Then cut the stems and ends off the lemons.

2. Score each lemon into a star: start by making a cut through the lemon from the top down to almost the bottom, but don’t slice all the way through.  Leave enough remaining so that the lemon stays attached.  Cut again twice more, to get a star shape.

3. Pack the insides of the star with lots of coarse salt.  Don’t be afraid of the salt it’s not going to become overly salty if you use too much.  Just go for it!

4. Now pack the lemons into clean, sterilized jars.  Really squish them in there so that the juices start to cover the lemons.  Add extra fresh lemon juice if you need to top each jar up so that all the  lemons are completely covered.  Keep squishing down the lemons over the next couple of days to get more juices out and covering the fruit.

5. Let sit for a month in a cold place like the fridge until the rinds soften.

To use the preserved lemons, rinse under cold running water and remove the pulp.  The pulp can be squeezed for it’s juice, but generally the rind is what is used.  Slice or dice the rind to add to recipes like this one: Chicken Tagine with Green Olives and Preserved Lemon. Yum!