Lemon Honey Preserves

Lemon honey preserves are basically lemon...preserved in honey. You end up with honeyed lemon and lemoned honey! This recipe is from Choki.

Ingredients/Equipment

-One glass jar that can hold at least 2.5 cups of liquid (I used a cleaned-out pasta sauce jar)

-Approx. 1 lb lemon

-Approx. 1 lb honey

Recipe

First off you'll want to sterilize your bottle. This is a good idea for any pickling/preserving. Put your open jar and cap in a pot and cover with water. Then bring it up to a boil and let the water boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the jar and cap, and let them cool.

Rinse and dry your lemons. Slice them thinly. (I made too many slices so I ended up using 2 jars).

Remove the seeds from all of the lemon slices. Then pack them into your jar. I like to use chopsticks for this part in order to more precisely and closely pack in the slices.

Then pour the honey into the jar!

You can see above that there are some pockets that the honey hasn't entered yet. That's ok, it will get there with time. Pop the jar in the fridge. For the next two or three days, occasionally open the jar and carefully stir the lemon around so that the honey can get everywhere.

Of course, you can eat these lemon honey preserves as soon as you want. Within the next few days, the lemon and honey flavors will incorporate together.

Result

The honey will be slightly thinner and more citrusy, and the lemon will be slightly more honeyed in taste.

You might ask, Tuck, why did you do this? You could have just put lemon and honey separately in your tea. First of all, I think the idea of lemon honey preserves is cute. Second of all, they kind of slap if applied correctly. It tastes really good in tea when you're sick, and lemon and honey are both good for recovery anyway. Also, lemoned honey tastes really good in hot cocktails like hot toddies! (A good idea for the upcoming holidays, right?) Basically, the melding of the lemon and honey flavors can be an asset in various drinks.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this recipe. Next post will probably be about doughnuts.

-Tuck

P.S. This is Tuck from the future - the lemon honey preserves started smelling off 5 months after this was written, and were fine last month. So based on my experience they last up to 4-5 months in the fridge.