When Life Gives You Lemon Peels Dehydrate Them!

Most of us don’t just sit around and think “What can we do with lemon peels?” but that’s exactly a conversation we had not too long ago. Recently the Viking and I were the recipient of some wonderful organic myer lemons from my good friend Angie at Schneider Peeps. By the way if you haven’t ever checked out her page you should she’s awesome and so is her blog!

The smell of lemon peels in the dehydrator has been permeating our lil’ house on our homestead; smelling lemon peels when you awake is absolutely dreamy! I was so excited to receive these lemons and we made limoncella, lemon wine, (blog posts coming soon), and of course we had lemon peels left so we decided to dehydrate them you won’t believe how amazing they smell! These lemons also look orange that’s because Angie’s lemons are from right on her homestead….they are way superior to any product I could ever get at a store they are Meyer Lemons and I can’t believe we got about 14 to 15 lemons and I quite frankly couldn’t believe what we were able to accomplish with just a box of them. Just goes to show you resourcefulness is absolutely a mindset!

All of the dehydrated lemon peels were placed into a canning jar, then crushed, and we poked holes on the top of the jar lid but have them sealed with plastic wrap as well so I can just shake the dehydrated lemon peels out when I need them and still keep them fresh and ready to go! Yes, this was The Viking’s idea! So clever!

 What would I do with lemon peels you might ask well there are plenty of traditional ideas for using lemon peels I know to spruce up baking recipes but since I don’t do a lot of baking here are the ways I plan to use the dehydrated lemon peels:

to season fish I will just put some butter on top and shake some grated lemon peel on top

to add flavor to soups and stews

add in to stir fry’s to add a lemon flavor

natural pest control

a natural infuser I can sprinkle some to some essential oil on my oil infuser

add to pasta dishes (in my case gluten-free)

add to sugar scrubs

I love making paleo banana muffins and I would add some lemon zest to that as well

Make sure to check out this blog post I wrote about “Dehydrating For The Pantry – An Ancient Method Of Food Preservation“….it’s truly a lost art and one of the most tried and true and I can’t fail to mention the easiest way to preserve your food! You work hard for it why should you not get to eat it all! Another favorite food of mine to dehydrate is apples but the Viking loves to make beef jerky too and it is a family favorite portable snack and highly addicting! I also make a soup mix which is I chop up carrots, onions, celery, and even cabbage before they go bad and dehydrate them and keep them all in a canning jar and toss this mixture into soups I can’t speak highly enough of how well it rehydrates quickly and turns a bleh soup into something awesome and healthy. I haven’t written a blog post on this yet but I should have because it’s amazing. My biggest concern right now is that I will probably use up all of these dehydrated lemon peels or zest way to fast. Lastly I want to mention to all of you don’t forget you can dehydrate mushrooms too a lot of folks on my facebook page mention they love to do that and it’s a huge money saver!

I am sure there are a ton more ideas on what to do with lemon peels all over the web but these are just my ideas and how I mainly plan to use our dehydrated lemon peels for and I hope you enjoy my thoughts on this topic! I love the idea of never letting anything go to waste….don’t you? In this economy the smarter we work the better off we are. What is your favorite thing to cook up with lemon peels?

I wish you all a beautiful week….Until next time!

Fondly,