freeze lemon juice

Can You Freeze Lemon Juice?

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Anyone who has ever brought a bag of lemons is likely to wonder if you can freeze lemon juice? Will it degrade the health benefits? Will freezing the lemon juice cause the flavor to chance? Why freeze it as opposed to refrigerate it? Let’s take a look and see if we can answer those questions.

 

Flash Freeze VS Home Freeze?

The first thing you have to differentiate is the difference between flash freezing and home freezing. They are much different in application and method. Flash freezing is a type of freezing method that is done in commercial factories to apply sudden freezing temperatures to fruit and thereby preserve it. It’s done much faster than you would ever be able to accomplish in your home freezer.

Home freezing takes time. The temperature in your freezer is no where as low as a commercial flash freeze. However, juice isn’t flash frozen. When you buy frozen juice, you are actually getting a heated concentrated juice. That orange juice in the supermarket is actually frozen, its heated and condensed and then frozen. No benefit to it at all.

So, if you are looking for juice with the healthy benefits of vitamins and enzymes, then you should definitely skip frozen condensed juice.

What Type of Lemon Juice Do You Want To Freeze?

There are two types of lemon juice you can freeze. The first type is the simple lemon juice that you get from squeezing fresh lemons. You can either use a hand pressed citrus squeezer or lemon juicer. Or you could manually squeeze the lemon juice through a sieve. The second type of lemon juice is the type of juice that comes from a auger juicer. This sort of lemon juice will have the citrus oil from the lemon rind. You can freeze either type. If you don’t already have a a good lemon squeezer you can read my reviews of lemon juicers here.

Can You Freeze Fresh Lemon Juice From Your Juicer

Yes, but it depends on what you are freezing it for. If you are looking to get the maximum health benefits from the lemon juice, then you would want to juice it and drink it as soon as it’s juiced. If, however, you are more interested in lemon juice for cooking, then you can certainly freeze it. You can then thaw out the juice and use if for cooking.

What Sort Of Container Should You Freeze Lemon Juice In?

The most important thing to remember is that you want to avoid plastics. It’s obvious that you should never use BPA but it’s even more important to not use BPA plastic when you are freezing anything that is acidic. The acid in the lemon juice can cause the plastic to leach out chemicals. So I advise that you use a glass container and one that is freezer safe.

How To Juice A Lemon To Freeze?

If you are planning on juicing a lemon and then freezing the juice, I suggest that you either juice the whole lemon using an auger style juicer. This is because the lemon oil that will be in the juice will help preserve a lemon flavor. If you only use a citrus press, you won’t get much of the true lemon flavor after a while. The lemon flavor will degrate and you will have basically an acidic liquid with a faint lemony flavor.

How Long Can You Store Frozen Lemon Juice

The longer you keep the frozen juice, the fainter the lemon flavor will be. And if you start with just squeezed lemon juice to begin with, it will not have as intense a flavor as the auger juiced lemon. The good news is that once it’s frozen solid, it will keep for quite a long time. There is not issue with it going bad, which is a concern if you leave it in your fridge. When you want to use it, place it in your fridge overnight and then you can use it the next morning.