How Much Juice Is in One Lemon?

We’ve all seen it in our recipe, “add the juice of one lemon” … But just how much is that? Depending on the kind of cook you are, you may like being a little more precise. In this article we are going to discuss how much juice really is in one lemon and give you a few thoughts to take away with you.

How Much Juice Is In One Lemon?

There is around 1.5 ounces of juice in a lemon!

Cups	Ounces	Lemons
1/4 cup of juice	2 Ounces	1.5 large lemons
1/3 cup of juice	2.66 Ounces	2 large lemons
1/2 cup of juice	4 Ounces	3 large lemons

We’ve always found this to a be a little strange when we see it in cookbooks. Yes, even the classier ones… Its something you don’t tend to see with other ingredients.

Why is it so weird?

Think about it… Imagine an apple pie recipe that said “add some apples” or heaven forbid, a spicy recipe; “add the seeds of a chili” … We doubt you’d be winning the award for chef of the month. So why do we put up with this slapdash phrase when we are cooking?

Well the truthful answer to how much juice is in one lemon is, that it really does depend on a few things. Let’s take a look at them…

The size of the lemon

We thought this would be obvious. As a good general rule the bigger the lemon, the more juice you are going to get out of it.

That’s pretty obvious right?

But its not always the case. What if you’ve got a particularly juicy lemon? How can you tell? Well the most consistent way is actually to use weight. If you are shopping and the store has accurate scales, (and you can buy individual lemons) give them a quick weigh.

The heavier the lemon, the more juice it is likely to contain.

But the story actually goes a little bit deeper than that…

How You Squeeze A Lemon

Well there are a few ways. Sure, you can just cut it in half and press it in your palm. But believe it or not that is not the most efficient way. Let’s look at a few techniques to get the most juice out of your lemon.

1. The stab and squeeze.

This one is easy. Cut your lemon in half and then pick up a fork. Repeatedly prick the cut side of the lemon. By rupturing the flesh within the lemon, you will actually release a little more juice prior to squeezing.

2. The high roller

This is another easy one to do, and is also a great tip for squeezing lime juice. Take your lemon and place it on a flat counter. Using a moderate to heavy pressure roll the lemon under your hand. Cut into a half and squeeze. By rolling the lemon under pressure, again you will rupture the flesh inside the lemon in a uniform way, therefore releasing more juice.

3. Drawn and quartered

Instead of cutting your lemon in half, cut it into quarters instead. The pieces will be smaller and as there is less peel you are able to get a bigger squeeze and therefore more juice.

4. Bathe your lemon

Warm lemons produce more juice than cold lemons. Submerge your lemon in a bowl of hot water for around a minute or two. By warmer the fruit you release more juice and you should find it easier to squeeze.

5. Use a juicer

If you are going to get juice out of fruit, why not use something that is purpose built for the task? Fruit juicers are perfectly shaped to ensure that you get the most juice out of fruit.

Feel free to use any combination of the above to get the most juice you can out of your lemon.

But now time to really answer the question. We used a bit of science to work out how to do it… We’ll say it again.

We used science to work out how much juice is in a lemon. Here’s how…

Regardless of how much we rolled pricked boiled and squeezed we couldn’t be sure of how much juice was left in the lemon so here’s what we did. We weighed the lemon before we did anything. It weighed 65 grams or 2.29 ounces.

With us so far? Great…

We then cut the lemon in half, placed it on an oven sheet and roasted it for 2 hours on a high heat. Lemon juice is a liquid, so it evaporates.

By heating it for a large amount of time we made sure all the juice boiled away. We then weighed our extremely well-done and dried out lemon, and took the difference in weight to be how much juice was in the lemon…

And the answer was….

Exactly 1.5 ounces!

There is around 1.5 ounces of lemon juice in a lemon!

That’s about four tablespoons of lemon juice. We will correct this slightly though as we also lost moisture from the skin and you’ll never be able to squeeze out every last drop….

So, what’s next?

After all our hard work we are now going to tell you how many lemons it will take to make different volumes, this is all based on average sized lemons….

One lemon makes three tablespoons of juice

Three lemons make half a cup of juice

Six lemons make a full cup of lemon juice

And if you need more than a cup of lemon juice, we really need to know what you are making?

Conclusion

Why do I need to know how much juice is in one lemon? Well if you are like us and sometimes a little lazy, you may want to use bottled lemon juice, so now when a recipe says; “add the juice of one lemon”, you’ll know how much juice is in one lemon and you can measure it exactly! Making your cooking super accurate.

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via New Kitchen Special