The Citrus Juicing Hack You Need For Avoiding A Splashy Mess
Juicing a lemon can be a painful task, not because there's anything all that hard about cutting a lemon and giving it a squeeze, but because the juice gets everywhere. It gets into cuts you didn't know about, under fingernails, and in the worst cases, into unsuspecting eyeballs. All of this just to spike your daily lemon water or to make a batch of lemon curd.
Suffer under the tyranny of wayward lemon juice no longer. Free yourself from the shackles of citrus, and make juicing one as easy as it should be with this simple kitchen hack: Instead of squeezing a citrus wedge and hoping for the best, make a simple slit in the fruit with a knife before you squeeze. This will release some of the juice and also give it an exit point so that it trickles out more gently.
The reason that citrus is so feisty to begin with is because the juice is contained in a series of tiny compartments that are broken when the fruit is squeezed. These are called juice sacs. It's the part of the fruit that you're trying to break when you roll a lemon before you juice it to loosen up and express some of the liquid before you even cut into it.
How to keep the seeds out while you juice citrus
The other great challenge of working with citrus is dealing with its many seeds. There's nothing worse than biting into a seed when all you wanted was to add some citrus to your fish tacos.
One of the easiest ways to solve this problem is to change the way you juice your citrus. Let's say you're working with half of a lemon. Instead of holding it with the cut-side down, turn that side up and gently squeeze the lemon. The juice will drip out of the top as it breaks down, and it will trickle into your recipe. Not only will this make it a more controlled expression of juice, but the seeds will be held in place and never leave the fruit.
If you only have thinly sliced wedges at your disposal, the easiest way to deal with the seeds is to just cut them out. Cutting away the inside-most section of a citrus wedge will not only provide better presentation, but you'll take the seeds away, as well. This also breaks into those juice sacs, which means that it will be a mess-free experience later when the time comes to squeeze the wedges.
How to juice a lemon without a knife
If you really want to save yourself from the mess of getting fresh citrus juice, then there is another method that doesn't even require a knife. If, in the quest for convenience, you've ever bought the shelf-stable containers of lemon or lime juice that are shaped like their respective fruits, then this hack might feel familiar to you. This one received a lot of attention on TikTok for a while. However, unlike some other TikTok hacks, this one apparently works.
@johannawestbrook Legit didn’t think this would work #lemonhack #quickrecipes #food #foodhack
What you do is roll the citrus on the counter to break down the juice sacs, than stab a kebab skewer (or some other sharp, stick-like apparatus) into the end of your fruit, remove it, and squeeze the citrus. All of the juice should come shooting out of the bottom, through the hole you made, and save you the mess of cleaning up a cutting board and knives.
It also makes storage a lot easier. Instead of covering half a citrus with plastic wrap or putting wedges away in some sort of container, you can just place the lemon or lime into a plastic baggie, seal it, and then use the rest later.