Is it possible to squeeze juice from a lemon without a juicer and how to do it?
Lemon juice is a valuable natural product for regulating the acidity of various dishes. You can use citric acid or vinegar, but it will be much more useful and tasty to add fresh juice to your food. It is good in vegetable salads and fruit slices, in sauces and in homemade mayonnaise, in various drinks and fruit drinks, in icing and in baking.
Often there is such a situation that very little juice is extracted from a large fruit, literally 1.5-2 tablespoons. Let's talk about how to facilitate the process at home and make it several times more effective even without a juicer.
How to squeeze out more product manually?
It turns out getting enough lemon juice at home is a snap. The main thing is to properly prepare the lemon. And you can do this using different methods.
Warm to room temperature
Keeping citrus fruits in the refrigerator is convenient and familiar. It often happens that, starting to prepare a dish, the hostess takes food directly from the refrigerator, prepares what is called "from under the knife."
In the case of citrus salad dressing, it is better to do more carefully and get fruits in advance from the refrigerator to the room.
The fact is that at a higher temperature, the flesh of the lemon becomes softerand the cell membranes in which the coveted juice is located are more supple.
The result of squeezing the juice from a warm fetus will be noticeably better than from its cold companion.Dip in a bowl of hot water
With increasing temperature, the fruit flesh becomes more and more soft. If you want an even more visible result, dip the lemon in a bowl of very warm water. Boil water is not necessary, just fill the tank with a tap with hot water.
Water must first be drained so that its temperature is higher. Use a heated and slightly cooled kettle for this purpose. The optimum temperature of the water is 60-70 degrees, so that the lowered finger can be in it for several seconds. It is not worth overheating the fetus. Heating can affect the taste of the juice and its quality. We want to get as much as possible not only tasty, but also healthy product.
Microwave
Great if you have a microwave. Put the lemon in it for only 30 seconds and quickly get the fruit ready to extrude. It is better to put the fruit in the microwave oven whole so that the valuable juice does not leakbut stayed inside. Its surface should become warm, but the fruit should not be overheated.
The principle of operation of the microwave oven is the same - the fruit heats up under the influence of microwave radiation, and its cell membranes soften. Juice will flow much easier when squeezed.
Freeze before placing in the microwave
There is another more laborious, but also much more effective way to get citrus juice. If you know in advance that you will need a lot of lemon juice, for example, to make several glasses of the drink, then you can send the lemon to the freezer.
Lemon juice is a liquid. Any liquid during strong cooling, that is, upon transition to a solid state, has the property of expanding. With the expansion of cell juice, cell membranes are damaged, torn. Therefore, after defrosting, juice actively flows from the fruit.
Frozen lemons are hard, so they must first be thawed, and they will become soft. The most convenient and fastest way is to use a microwave. Frozen fruits must first be thawed. For this, there is a special program in the microwave oven, and then turn it on for a short time. Heating is necessary so that the flesh shells that survived after freezing soften and give away the juice.
Roll around the table before cutting
The most affordable method of all - "works" even with cold fruits. It will be indispensable when there is no time to wait until they heat up, and juice is needed now.
- Take a lemon, put it on a flat surface of the table, press down with the whole plane of the palm and begin to intensively roll. Soon, you will notice that the fetus has become softer. All!
- And now we cut and squeeze.
With a heated lemon, the manipulation will be a little easierbut the effect will please you even if the fruit is from the refrigerator.
We suggest watching a video on how to squeeze juice from a lemon, after rolling it out on a board:
Cut along, not across
This tip is a complement to the previous ones. To get the juice, you have to split the lemon. Often it is cut across, so prettier when the lemon is needed for tea. But the juice is squeezed better when the fruit is divided in length. This is due to the fact that the area of bare pulp becomes larger, so the juice comes out better. At the same time, the amount of squeezed content should be increased by 2-3 times.
How to replace an electric juicer?
And how else to quickly squeeze the juice from the lemon?
- Arm with a fork. If you do not have a juicer, then a fork can work by its principle. Insert the teeth of the fork into the flesh of the lemon cut along the lemon and scroll with effort, then squeeze the fruit. This procedure must be repeated several times until the juice stops running. The teeth of the fork will damage the cell membranes and help the juice flow out.
- Use a manual citrus juicer. To do this, the fruit must be cut in half across. Put each half on the press with the pulp down and press firmly, slightly turning it on the press. Cell membranes will be damaged by mechanical action, and juice will leak from the lemon.
How not to get your hands dirty?
And now the most original and beautiful way to get fresh juice. It was created specifically for those who want to keep a manicure or have delicate skin on their hands. Lemon juice is quite aggressive and, when squeezed out, nibbles delicate skin and damages the coating of nails. To prevent this, use the following method.
You will need:
- sprayer;
- wooden skewer;
- scissors and lemon.
Lemon should be softer.
- We cut the tube of the sprayer to the desired length. Focus on the size of the lemon.
- Pierce the lemon at the base with a skewer.
- We insert a sprayer.
- Now you can sprinkle the salad beautifully and without hassle without getting your hands dirty.
How many grams of product are in one fruit and half?
In lemon, 70 percent of the weight is in liquid and 30% in flesh.Of course, all the juice is impossible to squeeze. Use our tips, and you will increase the effectiveness of this procedure, and more juice will come out than if you just try to get it without using various tricks.
Fruits are different in weight and juiciness. From fresh medium-sized fruit, approximately 50 -70 ml is obtained. juice. This is about 3-4 tablespoons. Accordingly, from half a lemon you get 1.5-2 tablespoons.
From this article, you have learned many tricks on how to properly extract juice from lemon, from the simplest to the more complex and creative. In order to use useful citrus fruit as efficiently as possible, it is very advisable to use several methods at once or choose one that is most effective.
Now you know how to get as much lemon juice as you need with a minimum of effort.