The Joy of Frozen Lemon Peel

I walk through my neighborhood coveting other people’s lemon trees. So you can imagine my joy when, in late March, a lady posted a photo of her lemon tree, groaning with fruit, on the neighborhood Facebook page. “If anybody would like to have some lemons, please let us know. We have more than we can use and would be happy to share,” she wrote. The next day she posted a photo of a plastic bin with a piece of paper taped to it announcing “Free Lemons” complete with illustrations. I wrote this glorious news into my tasks for the day. While driving my kids home from dance, I pulled over and picked up a handful of the citrus which were warm and heavy. The next day, there was still plenty of fruit so I took a few more, feeling greedy. By day three, I half-filled a grocery bag as the fruit was on the edge of overripe and walked home holding the lemons like a baby.  

On April 7, I turned to the Tomato Tomato Discord, during Alicia Kennedy’s Monday salon, for help. In uncanny timing, a few days after my lemon bonanza my in-laws gave me two grocery bags filled with tangerines from their tree. I eat citrus every day, starting with lemon in my first glass of water, but this was an overabundance. I’d already frozen trays of lemon slices and orange segments, but this time I didn’t want to compost the peels. I asked the chat, “What do I do with all this citrus?” 

On April 10, Cary replied that she used to make “different citrus cheongs then freeze the sugary peels to use in baking and cooking,” and linked a how-to. A cheong is a traditional Korean fermented fruit syrup, and I was pleased to see how streamlined the process was: Citrus, making sure to include some lemon, and sugar and time. Rebecca and Whitney also replied with recipes and stoked my resolve to make something that was new to me in the name of preserving food. 

I layered sugar and lemon and orange slices in glass jars and set it to meld in my refrigerator. After a week or so, I strained the syrup from the solids. I separated the orange from lemon rinds and chopped, then froze them on a half sheet. Next they went into a plastic bag and back into the freezer. 

Three months later, in early July, I went through my freezer and found the chopped lemon peels and challenged myself to actually use them. When I was processing the citrus, I had visions of lemon cake dancing in my head but it was the dead heat of summer and I wasn’t baking. Use your imagination, Devin. Preserving food is one thing, using it is the necessary next part.

A few days later I Googled “smashed chickpea salad” about two minutes before I got overhungry. This recipe for Smashed Chickpea Salad from Vanilla and Bean is one of the first results and comes together so fast. It works even if you don’t have the exact ingredients: I used less mustard and more pickles – and threw in about 2 T of the frozen lemon peel. Don’t call it elevated, but the taste of lemon every few bites made me happy.

I’m doing a bit of a Mark Bittman reading deep-dive and picked up his The VB6 Cookbook at my public library. There were a few forlorn potatoes in my cupboard so I gave his Moroccan Potato salad a try. I substituted Big Jim chilis for green peppers which is good to do if you like spicy food, like me. There were already raisins in the recipe, so I gave a second thought to adding the lemon peel, also sweet, but I threw a few tablespoons in anyway and it was a good decision. Lemon + cumin + cilantro is an all time favorite flavor combination of mine.

Last Sunday was finally the day I dealt with the broccoli. This was organic broccoli, purchased from a lovely organic store, brought out to my car by a worker who said hi to my kids – and once home I discovered it was covered with tiny bugs. I couldn’t throw it away and avoided it for weeks until it was also limp. But then I remembered Broccoli Cooked Forever from the Food52 Genius Recipes. It was perfect – parboiling the broccoli dislodged any remaining sediment and cooking it so long in olive oil, garlic, and anchovy paste took it from wan to rich. After that I riffed on a pasta – mixing the broccoli, zucchini boiled for the last few minutes of the shells’ cooktime, and a pesto-ish thing I made with pepitas, chives, garlic, olive oil, and the lemon peel all together in a big bowl. Four out of five of my family members loved it.

Arizona leads the U.S. in food waste (h/t to Alicia for sharing this updated source) and one in seven Arizonans are food insecure. Everyone I know hates throwing out food because we’re feeling the pressure of rising food costs. I’ve written before about anxiety around wasting food and the thriving world of convenience propaganda. The propaganda sang a different tune from WW1 through WW2: “Waste of food is disloyalty.” But post-war was a time of reward for those sacrifices and preserving food became the job of the food industry – for those who could afford to shop at the grocery store. My mom grew up poor and her family, like many others, often didn’t have enough food to go around in her early years. How she cooked was shaped by poverty, and that shaped me. It’s always been normal for me to eat leftovers until they’re gone, or freeze some of them, eat grains for breakfast, and to stretch expensive ingredients like meat, dairy, sweeteners, and condiments. Still, it’s difficult to take in all the messaging about ease and convenience without a small part of you starting to believe that preserving food isn’t the home cook’s job.

I have about 300 grams of diced lemon peel left in my freezer, but it won’t last long because the desire to use it has become lodged in my brain. Daily I’ll think, Could I use the lemon peel in this? The bright, sweet, flavor element makes friends with recipes easily, which is the main reason I’m sharing this with you. Preventing waste is the lemon twist on top. Rather than dismiss preserving food as too difficult and shamefacedly throwing out the broccoli, I present another option: Consider the whole fruit or vegetable and ask around about ways to make each part delicious.

Join my paid subscriber chat on TOMATO TOMATO, the Discord server that Alicia Kennedy started and is the place to be for conversations on food, culture, ecology, and more. We begin in The Good Enough Weekly channel at 1pm PST.

The Good Enough Weekly comes out on Fridays with new writing about eating regionally, with a focus on climate and labor justice. Rooted in the Sonoran Desert.