John Myers
Orange, lime, and lemon – is it hard to imagine a summer without these three? For delicious cocktails, juicy cakes, or exciting dressings you need the juice of citrus fruits. But how much juice is in which fruit? Here you can find out how to get the maximum amount of juice and how to use the peel optimally!
Juice yield at a glance
Would you have thought that it was the little lime that gave the most juice? It is 85% water and has the thinnest skin – making it the front runner as a juice producer. Due to the thin peel and the size, the lime is of course also the lowest denominator when you need to grate the peel. You can see what orange and lemon have to offer in comparison in this table:
Citrus juice in ml – Juice in tbsp – Zest in g
- Lemon 60 – 3 – 5
- Orange 80 – 5 – 6
- Lime 90 – 8 – 2
Squeezing tips
If you have a lemon squeezer, you can make it easy for yourself: cut through, squeeze, done. How much juice you get from an orange also depends on how the fruit is prepared. These tips will help you get the most out of your fruit!
- Buy ripe fruit
If the limes are still very hard, they are not ripe and therefore lack juice. When buying, pay attention to ripe fruits and their origin – they should be seasonal fruits, as they contain the most fruit juice. You can recognize a really good, ripe citrus fruit by the fact that it smells light, can be pressed in like an eraser, but is not mushy!
- Freeze the fruit briefly
The water expands due to the frost and the cell walls burst. If you then defrost the lemon or lime again, the cell walls are no longer an obstacle to squeezing out the juice. You save energy and get even more output!
- Roll out Orange
Roll the lemon, grapefruit, etc. back and forth on your countertop or cutting board with a little pressure. This will break the flesh and make squeezing easier.
- Cut lengthways
To get maximum juice out of the lime, don’t cut it in half crosswise unless you’re squeezing it through a citrus juicer. If you don’t have any, you’ll need to increase the surface area of the fruit. Therefore, always cut the fruit lengthwise and quarter it if possible.
Organic and size
Of course, how much juice the lemon ultimately produces also depends on its size – but not only! A small, slightly wrinkled, organic lemon might yield more juice than the immaculately yellow, giant variety you find in the supermarket. Sprayed, i.e. chemically treated, citrus fruits often have a very thick peel. They look great but are often less intense. If you mainly need the fruit for decorative food design, that’s good – if the aroma and content are important, it’s better to use more sustainable products.
Caution: You should also briefly remove any harmful substances from organic oranges and co. before grating off the abrasion or zest!
Sustainable shell
If you want to get the most out of orange, lime, and lemon, then you first pull the zest from the peel to get the perfect cocktail and cake decoration. What you don’t need for zest, you take as an abrasion and use it for baking. Then you squeeze the fruit – and finally, you take the squeezed peel and use it for delicious infused water or put it in the fridge for a nice fragrance experience.
