hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com
with state fair lemonade that's right i am very excited to be
showing you how to make real authentic vintage lemonade
the kind you might enjoy in a hot summer day if one of those stands at the state
fair maybe while you're not on a corn dog or
funnel cake and while everybody thinks they've had lemonade before
unless you've had it made using this method you actually have not
not even close so with that let's go ahead and get started
and what we're going to need here are six of the finest lemons you can find
which i've washed very thoroughly and if yours seem kind of waxy
you might want to give them a pretty good scrub under hot water since the
whole key to this recipe is using the peel
and what we'll do first is take a vegetable peeler and peel the zest
completely off all these lemons right not too too deep mostly we just
want the yellow part but if there's a little bit of white
attached that's totally fine and if you've ever wondered why the
lemonade at those stands at the state fair or the county fairs is so much
better than ours well this recipe is going to show you
why okay most of us just make lemonade out of lemon juice
but as you might know the oils in the lemon peel contain a tremendous amount
of lemon flavor and if we can somehow extract that and
add it to the flavor of the juice we're going to end up with something far
superior so what we'll do is peel all those lemons as shown
and of course we're going to save those so we can cut them in half and squeeze
them later and then to our bowl of lemon peels
we're going to go ahead and dump in our white granulated sugar
and then we'll give that a thorough mix and what's going to happen here is this
sits is that sugar is going to pull out all
those essential oils from the peel and then we will use the sugar to
sweeten our lemonade thereby introducing all that lemony goodness into our drink
so a very simple trick but devastatingly effective
so once we have that mixed what we'll do is cover it and we'll let it sit out
from anywhere between 2 and 12 hours in a little longer it's probably better
but 2 hours is fine at which point your sugar and lemon
should look something like this and what this mixture is actually called
by ancient romans or contemporary williamsburg bartenders
is oliosacrum which yes translates to oily sugar and
then what we'll do next is place five cups of cold fresh water over high heat
and we will bring that up to a boil and then just as soon as that water starts
to boil we will turn off the heat and transfer
in our sugar and lemon mixture and we'll go ahead and give that a stir
and then we'll simply let it sit there for about five minutes or so
or until all that sugar is dissolved at which point we're simply going to strain
it back into the bowl and man do i wish you could smell this
this stuff smells so good and then the only thing this needs to
finish it off is of course our fresh lemon juice
which we do not want to squeeze in while this is really hot
otherwise i think we might lose some of that bright fresh lemon flavor
so what we'll do after straining is just let this cool down to room temp
at which point then it's safe to go ahead and squeeze in our lemons which
i'm just going to do by hand through this strainer
although if you have one of those lemon squeezers like i usually use that might
work out even better but anyway the strainer was right here
so i used the manual method and obviously if you want to adjust the
amount of sugar or the amount of lemon go ahead
i mean you are after all the mr kincaid of your state fair lemonade
and it's up to you to manage your family's business beverage related or
otherwise so you're definitely allowed to tweak
the amounts and i've been known to squeeze in a little extra fresh lemon
juice because i like mine tangy and that's it once our fresh lemon juice
has been squeezed in we can transfer everything into a serving pitcher
at which point i like to cover it and refrigerate it until very very well
chilled all right if you pour this over ice now
and it's not super cold it's going to melt the ice and maybe
water down your drink so i'm going to go ahead and pop this in
the fridge for a while after which we can pull it out
and pour it over some ice and then we'll enjoy probably the greatest lemonade
you've ever tasted all right we have that tangy fresh lemon
flavor from the juice along with that much deeper more intense
more complex flavor from the lemon oil which is what makes this a truly
extraordinary beverage so i think we need to update that saying
when life gives you lemons peel them first toss them in sugar and
then make lemonade oh yeah words to live by although there
is one small problem i should warn you about
and that's that once you start drinking lemonade made like this it is virtually
impossible to go back drinking it how you used to
and you're going to need a really good poker face when your friend hands you a
glass of that non-authentic lemonade because even though you're going to be
smiling and say thanks your eyes and body language might be communicating
this is not everything it could be at which point their eyes might communicate
just drink it and stop looking at me like that but anyway that's
it how to make that awesome old-fashioned lemonade that you get at
those stands at the state fair since pretty much all those have been
cancelled this year we thought the timing was perfect for showing you how
to do this which is why i really do hope you give
this a try soon so please follow the links below for the
ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more
info as usual and as always enjoy
you