The Secret to Meyer Lemonade

According to Wikipedia, Meyer lemons are a cross between regular lemons and either mandarin oranges, or sweet oranges — created in China. I've tried adding a slice to a cup of tea, which is nice with regular lemons, but not at all good with Meyer lemons. So I don't think this lemon is superior to a regular one for general use, but as far making lemonade — whoa, the Meyer lemon is the Beluga of lemons (well, or whatever the fanciest caviar might be).

I've only ever seen these lemons for sale, in some specialty market, where I found a plastic-wrapped, cardboard container with six extremely messed up, gnarly, unpleasant Meyer lemons of extremely varied sizes — mostly very small ones. Those six cost five or six bucks. Well, a friend of mine has a grandma with a Meyer lemon tree, and he gave me a bunch. So it was lemonade time.

A Meyer lemon's juice is sweeter than a regular lemon (which means you can make it with less sugar than a regular lemonade — or if you opt for a sugar substitute, the result will be closer to what you get when doing so with standard lemons), but at the same time, it has a really interesting, sharp or fresh taste to it, that makes for an incredibly refreshing lemonade. But to properly extract that freshness from it, you need The Secret: the zest!

Get a very sharp, and thin-bladed knife. Cut strips off of the lemons, but try not to cut too deep. And most important of all, be extremely careful not to cut yourself:

Peeled Meyer lemons

Next, lay the strips in the bottom of a big container, with the zest side up. Try to cover the entire thing, and peel as many lemons as you need, in order to do so:

Meyer lemon peels

Then, you spread the sugar over the peels, and leave it for at least a couple of hours. You'll be able to smell that refreshing aroma rising up from it, after a while. And of course, the longer you can stand to wait, the more of that flavor the lemonade will have:

Meyer lemon peels with sugar

The final step for this little trick, is to pour boiling water over the whole thing (make sure you have a container that can handle the sudden temperature shift!) and leave it to cool. I then discard the strips and strain the liquid through a slightly coarse strainer first, and then through a much finer one. All that's needed then, is to add cold water and/or simple sugar to adjust the lemonade to your preferred potency and sweet/tartness.

Presto — the most refreshing beverage I've ever tasted:

Meyer lemonade