The Winter Pantry: Preserving Citrus in Salt and Sugar for the Months Ahead

Citrus season is one of the great consolations of winter. When the garden is bare and the farmers market is mostly roots and greens, there's a box of lemons, oranges, and mandarins sitting on the counter, bright and fragrant and cheap. I buy more than I can use fresh every year, and every year I preserve some of it. Two methods have stuck with me: salt-preserved lemons and citrus sugar. Both take almost no effort, both keep for a long time, and both make winter cooking better.

Salt-preserved lemons are a North African staple, and once you have a jar in the fridge you'll find reasons to use them. The rind softens and becomes intensely savory and floral. You chop it into tagines, grain salads, roasted vegetables, and salad dressings. A little goes a long way, and the flavor is nothing like fresh lemon — it's deeper and rounder, almost like a pickle.

Salt-Preserved Lemons

Start with thin-skinned lemons — Meyer lemons are ideal if you can find them, but regular ones work fine. Scrub them well. Cut each lemon from the top down into quarters, stopping about half an inch from the bottom so the lemon stays intact and opens like a flower. Pack coarse salt into the cuts, using about a tablespoon per lemon. Then pack the lemons tightly into a clean glass jar, pressing down so they release their juice. Add a few more tablespoons of salt, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and a cinnamon stick if you like. If the lemons aren't submerged in their own juice after a day, top off with fresh lemon juice. Seal the jar and leave it on the counter for a week, shaking it daily, then move it to the fridge. They're ready in about a month and keep for a year.

To use them, rinse the rind, scrape out the pulp, and chop the rind fine. The pulp can go into dressings or be discarded.

Citrus Sugar

Citrus sugar is the easiest preserving project in the world, and it's the one I give as gifts. You need citrus zest and granulated sugar, nothing else. For every cup of sugar, use the zest of two oranges or three lemons — organic fruit is worth it here since you're eating the peel. Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingertips until it's fragrant and slightly damp, then spread it on a sheet pan to dry for a few hours. Store it in a jar. It keeps for months and tastes like sunshine in February.

Use it in shortbread, sprinkled over muffins before baking, stirred into tea, or rolled into the edges of a citrus tart. It's also wonderful on roasted carrots with a little butter and thyme.

What I love about both of these is how they stretch a small window of abundance into the rest of the year. A box of lemons in January becomes a jar that carries you through summer. The pantry fills up while the garden sleeps, and that feels like a quiet kind of wealth.