Make Your Own Fresh Limeade With A Simple Method

Limeade is the ultimate summer drink most of us make on the spot by squeezing fresh lime juice into a cup or pitcher and stirring in sugar and water. You may even take it a step further by dissolving sugar in water over the stove for a more uniformly sweet limeade. A simple, yet unconventional method to make delicious and customizable fresh limeade is maceration. It's a well-known flavoring and sweetening technique for fruit salads, liqueurs, and fruit cakes that will also upgrade your limeade.

Maceration is a hands-off infusion method for fruit with two avenues of execution; you can either let the fruit sit in a liquid like citrus juice or alcohol, or coat the fruit in sugar. Both forms of maceration involve cutting or otherwise breaking the fruit down and letting it sit for extended periods for optimal flavor infusion. In the case of limeade, you utilize both types of maceration by sugaring pieces of lime peel and marinating them in fresh lime juice.

The sugar draws the flavorful citrus oils out of the peel and dissolves into the lime juice, resulting in a sweet limeade concentrate. Maceration takes time, but it's a process that takes as much effort as making limeade the old-fashioned way. You can leave the limes macerating while you go about your day, and a few hours later, you have a much more flavorful limeade base.

Macerating limes is a simple process that adds a few extra steps to a conventional limeade recipe. You still juice your limes, but you only use a portion of the lime juice, reserving the rest for other recipes or even to customize your personal glass of macerated limeade.

The next step of the process involves cutting lime peel into pieces and rolling them in sugar before placing them in the smaller portion of freshly squeezed lime juice. Maceration calls for a minimum of three hours, but you can leave the limes overnight if you'd like. After the sugar and lime peel integrate with the lime juice, add water, and strain the mixture into a pitcher or receptacle.

This concentrated limeade will last up to a week in the fridge. It'll also generate more cups per recipe than conventional limeade because you add even more water and ice with each glass served. You assemble each glass of limeade starting with the sugary lime concentrate in the same way you would construct a mojito by adding ice and club soda to muddled mint, sugar, and rum.