How to Make Moroccan Preserved Lemons with Sea Salt

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Moroccan preserved lemons are so easy to make! This is the best way to preserve lemons, and the whole lemon is used. You only need two ingredients, lemons and sea salt. This recipe takes about 10 minutes to prep and four weeks of fermentation time.

What are Moroccan Preserved Lemons?

Cured lemons have long been a part of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking, although most people associate them with North African, and particularly Moroccan cuisine.

Sometimes a plain squeeze of lemon juice on top of a dish is not enough, and that’s when we want to use preserved lemons. They add BIG flavor. The flavor can be described as highly citrusy, floral from the oils in the peels, and full of umami flavors from fermentation.

Preserved lemons add a fermented quality that regular lemons do not. 

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Long ago, as lemon trees spread from Morocco to India, so did the want and need to preserve them. Originally, lemons were preserved for the same reason all things are preserved—to store and eat them even when they are out of season.

Before refrigeration, preservation almost always happened through salting and/or fermentation. The earliest recipe for preserved lemons is recorded in the 12th-century Egyptian treatise On Lemon, Its Drinking and Use, by the Arabic-speaking court physician Ibn Jumay.

Jumay’s 900-year-old recipe is almost exactly like the preserved lemon recipes we see today. According to Toby Sonneman’s Lemon: A Global History, the recipe calls for “slitting the fruit and filling the gashes with salt, then pressing them into a jar, covering with lemon juice and letting them ferment for weeks.” In this recipe, we follow similar methods.

The hardest part of this recipe is quartering the lemons without slicing them all the way through. It helps to cut the ends off the lemons so you can stand them flat on a cutting board to quarter them.

You want the quarters to stay attached on one end so that the lemons kind of open up like a flower to hold the salt.

Recipes with Preserved Lemons

This is the traditional historical recipe I’ve based mine off of… except I use weight measurements for consistency. Limes and grapefruits can also be preserved the same way, leading to all kinds of fun fermentation experiments and recipes this summer.

I plan to let mine ferment for a month; then they will keep in the fridge indefinitely. I’ll probably use them in salads and light, fresh meals on hot days this summer. I’d love to develop a Mediterranean lamb burger recipe that calls for preserved lemons. 

To use these fermented lemons, you can chop and use them as is for a source of lemon flavor and salt, or you can rinse the lemons. I mostly discard the pulp, then rinse the rind well to chop and use anywhere I’d use lemon zest.

It doesn’t take much fermented lemon to add a delicious bright lemon flavor to recipes.

Click here to try my shrimp ceviche recipe with fermented lemon.

Preserved Lemon Recipe

Here are the supplies you need:

• 32 ounce Wide Mouth Mason Jar
• Standard Metal Mason Jar Lid (this can rust in the presence of salt)
• OR Rust Free Plastic Lid
• or you can use a Weck Jar (without the gasket; only use the clips to secure the lid)
• Sea Salt
• Scale
• Mixing Bowl 

Fermented Lemons

Here are the fermentation conditions for these lemons:

• 20% Salt
• 4 weeks of fermentation
• 60-80°F
• Final pH about 3
• Store in the refrigerator indefinitely; these lemons also keep at room temperature for a year.

Other Fermentation Recipes to Try

• How to Make the Healthiest Naturally Fermented Garlic
• The Best Lacto-Fermented Green Beans with Ginger and Scallions
• How to Ferment Sauerkraut with Blueberries and Açaí

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