BUYING LEMONS

OK, it's trivial, but wanted to know if anyone else knows this to be true. Steven Raichlen, on one of his BBQ America, or BBQ University, BBQ And Lots of Facial Hair and Shades , or BBQ Ad Nauseum shows, said that a lemon with smoothly rounded ends will always have more juice than a lemon with the bulbous ends. Anyone? I simply pick several up, and buy the heaviest ones.

no idea if it's universally true, but it has indeed been my experience that the rounded lemons seem juicier.

Hi,

My lemon purchasing advice came from Bob S who was quoting Cook's Illustrated: buy lemons you can squeeze. If they are rock hard, they will not be easy to extract juice from. Only last weekend, I was checking out the marked down fruits and vegetables. There were several packages of lemons that were very soft sided. I gambled and took them home to find them the juiciest lemons I ever encountered. They were probably overripe, though not bad.

Regards,

One trick to get the most out of any citrus is to microwave it for 10-20 seconds, then let cool briefly before rolling them on the counter with a little firm pressure - the heat seems to help the pulp break up a little more.

I'm not sure if this is scientifically true, but it has been my experience in the past few weeks. I picked up some rounded end lemons with thin skins - they were incredibly juicy and tasted brighter and cleaner than the previous batch of lemons I'd gotten that were the thick skinned, bulbous-ended Sunkist variety.

I made Greek style lemon chicken with the round lemons and it was fantastic. The round lemons seemed to have at least twice as much juice as the bulbous one. They were also easier to eat straight than the bulbous lemon (I had one bulbous lemon left over from the week before). I wish I'd paid more attention to the brand/variety of lemon that was round, because I'd like to make cocktails with that variety all summer long.

Does anyone know the name of the round variety?

hmm . . . Harvestime sometimes has thin-skinned, rounded-end lemons that they call sweet lemons (as opposed to the thick-skinned, pointy-end Eureka lemons we usually see in stores) - they weren't as good as Meyer lemons, but they were definitely less acidic & less sour than Eurekas.