Quick Tip: Freeze Citrus Zest

Lemon, orange, and other citrus zest is a favorite around here; we use it to brighten everything from pasta to cakes and salads. With the abundance of citrus this time of year, it's an ideal time to freeze zest for later.

Lately, any time we're about to use a lemon, lime, grapefruit, or orange for juice or segments, we take a few seconds to zest it first and pop that in the freezer. The fragrant zest will be particularly nice to have later in the year, when special varieties like Meyer lemons and pomelos aren't as readily available.

We just throw all the zest in one freezer bag (with a different bag for each fruit), but if you wanted to be more precise, you could measure out individual teaspoon or tablespoon portions and wrap those in plastic.

(Image: Emily Ho)

Comments (7)

I think I'll start doing this, but does the zest really keep well? I would think that fresh zest would be noticeably better, no?

i do this too. and yes, toddless, fresh zest is better, but sometimes I just dont have it on hand and my freezer stash will work in a pinch.

I have the opposite problem. I made citrus salt as holiday presents and now I have dozens of bald citrus in my freezer. They're kinda a pain to thaw when I need them.

I freeze zest in some of the juice in ice cube trays (only filling them to half full or less), rather than freeze the zest on its own, that way when it thaws I have both zest & juice. I think that method tends to result in better quality zest than freezing it on its own.

Frozen zest keeps remarkably well! We used to do this in a production kitchen setting with lemons - zest them all bald and freeze it, then juice them all and just refrigerate that, since we'd go through the juice faster.

For a long time I was keeping a small mason jar of orange zest in the freezer because I'd use them so infrequently, but have an abundance when they actually were in the house.

I also toast orange zest & store it for making toasted orange aioli. Then whenever the mood strikes, I can whip up the aioli without needing to buy oranges, zest them, then toast & wait to cool.

I prefer to use fresh but whenever a recipe calls for a citrus juice but not the zest, I hate to waste anything so I zest the fruit and freeze it. I saved an empty container from one of these: Dorot Chopped Basil Tray

I pack the fresh zest right into it and each little square it makes 1 tsp perfectly. Then it's ready for when I don't have any fresh citrus in the house or when a recipe calls for the zest and no juice.