Lemons and oranges are tasty citrus fruits, especially during these hot summer months. After making lemonade, orange juice, or some other treat, you’ll probably want to toss the peels into your compost bin. While this is a perfectly acceptable practice, have you ever considered using the peels to make something new?
When it comes to food waste, it’s important for us composters to get creative before we chuck everything in our backyard bins. Composting is pretty awesome for your garden and for the earth, but food should always be eaten if possible! Need some ideas to get you started? Well, pull up a lawn chair, put on some sunglasses, and learn about how you can upcycle citrus peels this summer:
1. Let’s start simple…. use the zest! Zesting a lemon or orange is a great way to extract its delicious flavor for deserts and other recipes. If you don’t need the zest immediately, you can freeze it for future use. Feel free to compost whatever is left of the fruit after you zest it.
2. Let’s get fancy…. make a marmalade! Orange and lemon marmalades are a yummy breakfast addition. You can even make St.Clement's Marmalade (orange and lemon combined), which is quite popular in the U.K. Best of all, most marmalade recipes use nearly the whole fruit!
3. Let’s get fancier…. make a flavored olive oil! Lemon and orange olive oils can be fun and fresh alternatives to traditional olive oil. Just make sure to carefully strain the excess oil out of the citrus peels before you compost them!
Hopefully these summery recipes inspire you to use your
citrus peels before (or instead of) backyard composting them. For more tips on
how to reduce food waste at home, you can visit the Wasted Food Stops With Us
website and subscribe to Tony’s blog!
I inherited my MIL's marmalade recipe which is very similar to St. Clement's. You inspire to get on it before the navels are gone, IMHO, the best oranges. Thanks!
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