Preserving Lemons and Making Whey lemonade

I ordered 10 lbs of organic lemons form Azure Standard this month since I wanted to preserve some to use this winter and make some fermented lemonade from a recipe I found.

Preserving them is so easy and smells so nice, not to mention they look really bright and sunny in the jars sitting on the shelf in my pantry.  There are a million sites on the Internet showing you how to do it but at the risk of being redundant I am going talk about how I did it and add some pictures.

You need to sterilize a jar and lid, sharpen a knife, wash the lemons, and get your salt and cutting board out.

I sliced some of the lemons for one jar and cut some of them into quarters for another jar.  So basically you slice them (taking seeds out is optional) ans layer them in the jar with salt in the layers.  As you layer them you press down and work the juices out of them all the way to the top of the jar.  You need to make sure you have enough juice to cover the lemons when you are done.  Don't worry if the juice doesn't cover them immediately, the salt will draw out the juice and within 24 hours it should cover the lemons. 

After I was done preserving the lemons I cut a few up with their juice in a half gallon jar, added spring water, 1/2 c sugar and 2 tablespoons of whey.  I'm not too worried about the sugar because some of it will be "eaten" in the fermentation process.  The jars of preserved lemons and lemonade were then place on the counter for a couple of days.  You need to shake them a couple of times a day.  I also pressed down on the lemons in the jars to get a good amount of juice above the rinds. 

After a couple of days I pressed the preserved lemons down one more time, covered the juice in the jars with a layer of olive oil, put the lid on tight, and placed the jars in the pantry.  When you use preserved lemons, you use the peel not he pulp.  The lemonade went into the refrigerator and was really refreshing with our dinner.