Making Preserved Lemons for North African Cooking

By How to Choose a Good Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Comments 35
23 Jun 2026

Making Preserved Lemons for North African Cooking

Why Preserved Lemons Belong on Your Shelf

If you cook Moroccan or broader North African food, preserved lemons are one of the few things where the homemade version is genuinely better than the shop-bought one. They are also almost absurdly easy. Take unwaxed lemons, pack them with coarse sea salt and their own juice, and wait. The salt does the work: it draws out the juice, softens the rind, and keeps the wrong sort of microbes at bay while the flavour quietly transforms.

The result is not a substitute for fresh lemon. The rind turns silky and spoonable, and the taste is salty, sour, faintly floral and gently fermented — closer to a good green olive than to lemon juice. Once you have a jar in the fridge, you will find yourself reaching for it with roast chicken, couscous, salad dressings and anything at all involving lamb.

Choosing the Right Lemons

Unwaxed fruit is essential. Supermarket lemons are usually coated in wax, which traps whatever you would rather not eat. If you can only find waxed ones, scrub them in hot water with a drop of washing-up liquid and rinse very thoroughly — but lemons from a greengrocer, a farmers' market, an organic box or your own greenhouse are the right starting point.

Thick-skinned varieties hold their shape beautifully, while thin-skinned ones soften more quickly. Meyer lemons are sweeter and less acidic but work well; just be a little heavier-handed with the salt. Avoid any fruit with bruises, soft spots or a hint of green fluff at the stalk end.

As a rough guide, 1kg of lemons fills about a 1 litre jar. Buy one or two more than you think you need, because you will always want extra juice for topping up.

The Salt-and-Juice Method, Step by Step

Fifteen minutes, one clean jar, no special equipment.

Sterilise your jar. Wash a 1 litre glass jar and its lid in hot soapy water, rinse, then heat in a low oven at 120°C for 15 minutes. Fill it while still warm.
Cut the lemons. Trim the stalk ends, then cut each lemon lengthways into quarters, stopping about 1cm short of the base so the quarters stay attached and the fruit opens like a flower.
Salt the cut faces. Rub a generous tablespoon of coarse sea salt into all the exposed flesh, working it well into the cuts.
Pack them in. Press the lemons into the jar hard, so they release juice and sit snugly, scattering a little extra salt between layers.
Cover with juice. Top up with fresh lemon juice until the fruit is completely submerged. This can take the juice of six or more lemons.
Add aromatics. Tuck in a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick, a few coriander seeds, some black peppercorns or a dried chilli. Keep it restrained — one or two at most.
Seal and shake. Lid on firmly, shake well, then leave at room temperature.

The rough ratio to remember is about 100g of coarse sea salt per kilogram of lemons. Do not use table salt or fine sea salt: anti-caking agents cloud the brine, and fine grains dissolve into an overpowering sludge. Coarse flakes are the whole point.

The Waiting Game

Shake the jar daily for the first week, which helps the salt dissolve and the juice circulate. After that, move it to a cool, dark cupboard and leave it alone for at least three to four weeks. A warm kitchen may get you there in a fortnight; a chilly pantry can take six weeks. You will know they are ready when the rind yields easily to a spoon, the liquid has turned syrupy and the smell is aromatic rather than sharp.

Salt crystals forming around the lid are normal. A white film on the surface is usually harmless yeast — skim it off. Fuzzy blue-green or black mould is not: if it sits only on the topmost lemon and the liquid below is clear, lift that lemon out and top up with fresh juice; if it runs through the jar, throw the lot away and start again. Above all, keep the lemons submerged. A little extra juice now and then is cheap insurance.

How to Use Them, and a Few Variations

Rinse a lemon, scrape away the pulp — push it through a sieve into a vinaigrette rather than wasting it — and chop the rind finely. Add it to tagines, chermoula, roast chicken, lamb, couscous, yoghurt, grain salads, green beans, crushed potatoes and hummus. Think of it as lemon zest and salt in one, with a savoury depth neither can manage alone.

Beyond the classic version, you can vary the aromatics to suit the jar's eventual destination, or use the brine method instead: submerge whole salted lemons in a saturated solution of 100g salt to 1 litre water and wait three weeks. It is less intense but far less fiddly. Freezing lemons overnight, defrosting them and then packing them with salt is a useful shortcut — they soften in about ten days. Kept submerged and topped up with juice, a jar will happily last a year, and makes a very welcome present tied with a ribbon.

Culture

Simple Mediterranean Diet Principles for Everyday British Cooking

Plan gentle hikes through white villages, stopping for tapas, chilled gazpacho and generous pours of local olive oil.

Previous Post At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium.

Next Post Dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentiu deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores

5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

Jenny Watson

Hi! beautiful people. I`m an authtor of this blog. Read our post - stay with us

Instagram

How We Can
Help You!

Balance green waste with cardboard and dry leaves, turn regularly and use the finished compost to feed herbs and vegetables.

section heading hidden

Our Latest News

A Weekend Walking and Eating in Andalusia

Composting Kitchen Scraps for a Productive Garden

Understanding Mediterranean Food Culture Beyond Recipes

Contact Us

Article