Dried lemon zest is a convenient and versatile ingredient. And it is super easy to make. Air dry the lemon zest if you have the time (perfect for a small amount of zest), or speed up the process with your oven.
Servings2 tablespoons
Ingredients
- 4 lemons*
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 170 °F fan*. Or use your lowest oven setting.
- If you have waxed shop-bought lemons, rinse them with just boiled water (or very hot tap water) and scrub them with a vegetable brush to remove the wax. Or use a clean tea towel to rub off most of the wax. You can skip this step if you have unwaxed organic or homegrown lemons – just give them a rinse with cold water.
- Use a Microplane or the finest side of your box grater to remove the lemon zest. Alternatively, remove slices of lemon peel with a vegetable peeler. Try to get mostly yellow lemon skin and avoid too much white pith in your zest or lemon peels.
- Spread the lemon zest or peels on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer. And place the baking tray in the centre of your preheated oven.
- Check on the zest after 30 minutes and stir. If it is not fully dried, return to the oven and check every 10 minutes. The yellow lemon zest will darken into orange, but it should not be brown. For me, this takes about 40 minutes. The whole lemon peels take longer to dry than lemon zest, about 2 to 3 hours – which is why I prefer to dry the fine zest. Check the drying lemon peels every 20 minutes or so.
- To make lemon peel powder, add the dried lemon zest or dried lemon peels to a spice grinder. And blitz it into a fine powder.
- Transfer your dried zest, peel or dry lemon powder to an airtight container or spice jar. Keep in a dark, dry space for up to one year.
Notes
- Use however many lemons you have. I dry lemon zest before I squeeze lemons for their juice, so I often dry the zest of only one lemon at a time. Four small lemons give roughly two tablespoons of dried lemon zest.
- If you don’t have a fan-assisted oven (convection oven), increase the temperature to 200 ºF (95 ºC).
- For air drying: Place the paper-lined baking tray in a well-ventilated, sunny spot inside the house. Stir the zest every few days until it is dry and shrivelled. It takes about a week, depending on the humidity. This method works best for fine lemon zest instead of large pieces of lemon rind.
- Boost your air drying with residual oven heat from cooking: Add the prepared baking tray with lemon zest or peel to your turned-off oven that is still hot. If the grated lemon peel is not fully dried by the time the oven is cold, return it to the sunny spot and repeat as necessary.