…smash them lemons, I say! And make iced tea!
My iced tea skills have improved over the years. I abandoned sun tea for fear of bacterial contamination, and traded orange pekoe for black. But fresh lemons instead of bottled lemon juice really seemed to put me in the big leagues.
The question today is: Which lemon abusing tool gets the most from your lemons? The extractor or the reamer?
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| Yellow to make you think lemony thoughts |
You’d think the extractor would be better just because of the more technical sounding name:.exTRACTorrrr. But is it? Let’s put them to the test!
I shall juice two lemons with each—1 small, 1 large, as seen at the top of the page—into the measuring cup. That should even out any tiny deviations among the test subjects. Then we shall see which tool yields the most lemon juice.
First, the extractor, which uses a lever action to squash the lemon pulp flat. It is fast-acting and seems to leave nothing behind.
The pulp remains in the peel and any seeds are generally left in there as well.
After the large and the small lemons, we have just
Slightly under a third of a cup.
Now the reamer.
This definitely takes more effort, requiring a twist action to get the most out of the fruit. The colander-like basket catches seeds and any large pieces of pulp. But the lemon half does not seem to be as crushed by the reamer as by the extractor.
To my surprise, however, the reamer is the victor with slightly more than a third of cup of lemon juice produced!
This may seem unlikely, but the difference can be explained by one small problem with the extractor that I did not take into account -- it has a bad habit of shooting juice out the side when you initially press the lemon. The only way to catch the loose juice is to hold the extractor's head in a bucket, and I'm not making tea or lemonade on an industrial scale.
On the other hand, the extractor is faster, so if you were to want a lot of juice, that would be the better way to go. Maybe you want to become the next Nedick's or Orange Julius. Just make sure to get a food-grade bucket -- those Home Depot buckets just won't do the trick.
5 comments:
Science!
Goodness, either you have been doing it wrong all along (as the hipsters like to say in their clickbait), or I have. I always put the lemon into the extractor *cut side down*. We have both tools and I prefer the extractor because I believe it is more efficient but I have never done an a/b measurement. Intrigued.
I really need to get an extractor. It's not a need I have often, but we occasionally host gatherings where making multiple pitchers of margaritas happens. And fresh lime is much, much, better than bottled for those. A couple of dozen (or more, depending on the quality factor) limes through a reamer takes a lot of effort.
I'll probably inherit my parents' plastic reamer, so I'm going with that, because I'm cheap, er thrifty.
rbj13
You are indeed doing it wrong. Turn the lemon over and the juice won't leak out the sides (as much). Extra smashing power that way, too. You're welcome LOL
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