Summer Lemonade

The most simple recipes are sometimes the hardest to perfect

I think there’s something beautiful about doing something simple right. A perfect grilled cheese, a just right fried egg. It was drilled into us in culinary school, but to do the classics justice is sometimes a bigger challenge than an extravagant meal. Growing up my little sister and I had a tradition: on the last day of school we would have lemonade and chocolate chips cookies to mark the start of summer. A crispy refreshing glass of lemonade holds a nostalgic place in my heart and this recipe is a classic.

The flavor of “lemon” actually comes from two different parts of the lemon. When you smell a lemon at the grocery store that fragrance or aroma is actually coming from the oil in the rind. When you sip lemon juice the flavor is coming from the contents of the juice. Your tongue can actually only taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, and (as recently discovered) fatty. For a lemonade to be enjoyable it needs to be a pleasing aroma and have a good flavor balance.

This lemonade recipe utilizes a technique of using your fingertips to rub the sugar into lemon zest to release the aromatic lemon oils into the syrup, and using the lemon juice to give it that lemony sweetness and tartness. The lemon concentrate base can also conveniently be used for any lemony summer cocktails you have planned. Be careful, you almost can’t taste liquor you add to this so use with caution!