  I don’t know about you, but one of the worst things I know of in cooking, is zesting lemons, limes and oranges. I have, in the past, posted the tip to freeze your rinds in freezer bags to whip out in your time of need and zest with much greater ease. However, no matter fresh or frozen fruit hulls, the zester makes no distinction between the rind and your knuckles. More than once, I have let go a yelp because I got too close to those nasty little teeth that rip the skin. Now, I’m a great fan of oranges and it seems that the ones recently have been extra good. Oranges are like candy to me and so Mr. Fix-It says nothing when he finds me typing away at the computer with sticky fingers and juice dripping from my chin. Yes, yes. My momma taught me better. I just grin and hand him a quarter and say, “Wanna slice?” He always takes it.  So I’m munching on an extra sweet citrus and I’m staring at the pile of peels on the cutting board. My mind clicks and I think, “So, why couldn’t I dry the peels and chop them up for zest?” And so my experiment began.  Now, the whole point of zest is to basically just take the outer rind of the fruit. No fibrous, white, inner rind. I know that when I’m zesting, though, I get some of that white lining and so I figured a little wouldn’t hurt. Therefore, I used a sharp knife and slid it under the inner skin and carefully cut between it and the outer orange rind.  I laid the cut rinds out in the air to dry. I decided not to use a dehydrator because I was concerned that the heat would change the flavor of the orange rind zest.  After a week, the skins were so dry they were leathery/brittle. I popped them into the blender and pulverized them!   The result was wonderful! I figured out that I could put the “zest” into a jar and then just keep adding as I dried more oranges. I did the same with lemons. Actually, I found lemons for 33¢ each and so I bought a boatload. I brought those home and juiced them, froze the juice in ice trays as 1 oz cubes and then quartered the rinds to easily slice the white inner skin from the outer rind. I dried those too. In the picture, the lemon zest is to the left and the orange is on the right.  I used the zest in my basic scones recipe and wow. They were wonderful. That’ll be my next post – the recipe! All I know is that now I have a new “zest for life!” 🙂 |
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Tags: dehydrating, lemon, orange, scones, zest
Excellent idea.Not sure I would use all that peel but heh if I had it I might!
Marlyn, I use orange peel in my blueberry muffins, orange icing for cookies and scones, in the scones and even in cooking chicken. I put up a recipe for wonderful chicken stock that calls for dried orange zest and this is so much better than what you buy at the store!!
Great idea!
[…] And yes, if I should ever decide to market the mix, I WILL have to kill you. This recipe uses the dried orange zest from a couple of posts ago. So here you go: English […]