Salt preserved lemons

Cooking time: 10 min. / 0 min.Difficulty: easy

Recipes → Morocco

Salt preserved lemons are part of many Moroccan dishes. They enrich them with their specific and intense flavour and bring saltiness and sourness to the dish too. You can find them in various tagines, salads and offal dishes.

Process

Clean the lemons thoroughly, ideally with a brush. Remove the stem and make two short cuts at the top. If you use large lemons, make the cuts longer and deeper.

Cram them into the jar, that they do not move. Each layer cover with salt and pour by a lemon juice. If you use large lemons, put the salt into the cuts too.

Lemons should be sumberged in the juice. If necessary, add more juice or a bit of water too. The more water, the less intense the flavour will be.

It is important, that the lemons are really compressed to release more juice and not to float.

Close the jar and leave in a room temperature. 

During first week compress the lemons every 2 days to release more juice. Then let them rest at least 3 more weeks to gain the right taste and to become soft.

Then they are ready to use for various dishes like tagines, salads and various Moroccan recipes.

It is important to count with the fact, that preserved lemons add saltiness to the dishes, so use salt accordingly. The longer cooked with the meal, the more salty and sour flavour they bring to the dish.

Once the jar is open, put it into the fridge. The lemons will last like this several months.

 

To buy salt preserved lemons US, UK, Europe, sea salt US, UK, Europe, jars US, UK, Europe