After last week’s success with the freckled lemonade, I decided to play with the recipe a bit to get a plain lemonade that does NOT require you to actually juice lemons. The upshot to this is that the recipe can be made in as little as 10 minutes.
The problem with that other recipe (problem is loosely used in this context) is that it requires you to buy a lot of lemons to juice. Now if you have an juicing machine, it’s not a terrible ordeal, but even so, you need at least 10 lemons for that recipe, and that alone is like $5 with of supplies for a single batch. Don’t get me wrong, the flavor is outstanding, but it is a lot of work to do, and if you want more than one batch, you’re going to be doing the juicing thing for a few hours.
So this recipe is done instead with a bottle of Lemon Juice, typically found in 32 oz sizes in grocery stores, and for about $3.00 per bottle. This will get you 2 – 3 batches of lemonade, depending on how strong you like to make it.
Ingredients
- 12 oz (1 ½ cups) lemon juice
- 16 oz (2 cups) water
- 1.5 cups of white sugar
Procedure
Bring the 16 oz of water to a boil in a medium sauce pan on the stove. Slowly add in the sugar, a half-cup at a time, stirring until it dissolves. Once you’ve dissolved in all 1.5 cups of sugar, let it boil for about another minute, than set aside.
Pour the 12 oz of lemon juice into a large (48 oz or larger) pitcher. Add some ice. After the sugar / water mixture has cooled, you can add it to the ice and lemon juice. After that, you’ll need to fill up the pitcher slowly with cold water and stir it regularly. This part will need to be done to taste. I like a slightly more sour flavor, but some people prefer it more balance and others prefer sweeter, so you’ll need to mix it to your preference. I suggest playing with the balance of the portions until you find one you and / or your guests will like.
The best balance seems to be 2.5 cups of cold water to 12 oz lemon juice and 16 oz of syrup water, but again, that’s something you do to taste.