How A Skewer Can Make Juicing A Lemon Easier Than Ever
From heavy-duty countertop presses to durable handheld squeezers, there are a variety of tools that can be used to juice a lemon. Even a simple wooden citrus reamer can make whipping up the ultimate lemonade recipe a breeze. However, there's a much better way to juice a lemon quickly and with minimal effort, and it involves piercing the tangy fruit with a skewer.
Whether you need lemon juice to add a bit of zing to a bland salad dressing or to brighten up the flavor of pasta sauce — you can forgo the fancy juicers because this juicing hack will certainly do the trick. It not only allows you to juice a lemon at record speed but will also help you avoid a splashy mess. Not to mention, it will enable you to get the maximum amount of juice from a lemon, ensuring not a single drop of the good stuff goes to waste. The trick? It's simple: You use a skewer to pierce one end of the lemon, turn it hole-side down, and squeeze!
Use a skewer to juice a lemon faster
That's right — the same wooden or metal sticks that are commonly used for kebabs and other barbecued meals are the only handy tools you'll ever need to juice a lemon. Using a skewer for juicing purposes is incredibly easy: Simply take the pointed end of the stick and insert it into one end of a lemon. You want to push the skewer in about 1.5 to 2 inches in order to create a hole for the juice to flow out of. Next, remove the skewer and start squeezing over a bowl — no cutting, manual pressing, or splattering mess required.
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Another helpful tip: Be sure to give your lemons a little roll on the counter or another hard surface first. Doing this for about ten seconds or so before inserting the skewer will help to loosen up the juices inside, making for even faster and easier juicing. And the riper the lemons the better because you won't have to squeeze as hard.
Use the skewer trick for seed- and pulp-free lemon juice
The clever juicing hack is already taking social media by storm. After hearing about the trick on TikTok, user @johannawestbrook tested it out — and let's just say she was definitely impressed. "Wow, it actually works," she exclaims in a video while effortlessly squeezing the juice out of the lemon (per TikTok). "Okay, so the coolest part about that is there are no seeds in here," she adds. "This is so awesome!"
And user @jeenie.weenie, who opted for a chopstick in lieu of a skewer, was equally impressed. She rolled the lemon first, loosening the juice, as it were, before stabbing the yellow fruit with the narrow end of her chopstick.
In addition to no seeds mucking about, another perk is that you won't wind up with any pesky pulp in the juice either, which is prone to happen when using a citrus juicer or reamer. Another great benefit is that you can squeeze out only the amount of juice that you need, keeping the lemon intact in the process, so you can save it to be used later. It really is easy peasy lemon squeezy.