This past weekend I did a whole slew of home cooking – I made smoked ribs and smoked pork butt (so I could have leftovers), green bean salad, black rice (truly, it was black – the cooking liquid turned purple), dessert and this delicious strawberry lemonade. Jake and I have been working on eating at home more and doing more home cooking to save up extra funds for our trip to Florida at the end of April. With it’s sort-of fast approach, more home cooking it what we’re doing so you’ll see a few more recipes posted here lately. Hope you don’t mind.
I went to H Mart again in the hopes that they’d have those $1.99 strawberry baskets again, but they did not. I ended up getting two pounds of strawberries for $3.49 which wasn’t too bad. I ended up using some for this lemonade and some for a dessert which I’ll show you soon – promise.
You could totally make lemonade by just dumping sugar, lemon juice and water into a pitcher and hope for the best. But there are a couple of things to elevate and make it more yummy. First: make sugar syrup! Dissolving the sugar in water over heat melts the sugar so your lemonade doesn’t taste weirdly grainy. I added the lemon peels to the sugar syrup to infuse the lemon flavor just a bit more.
Pulse your strawberries in the lemon juice to make for easier blending!
Dump everything into a pitcher and make sure to strain it all. You sure don’t want to swallow a lemon seed or get a little peel in your drink.
To be all fancy pants, I put strawberries on the rim of the glasses before serving. Makes it feel extra special if you ask me!
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup sugar
- peel from 3-4 lemons
- 1 1/2 cups lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
- 2 cups strawberries (1 pint)
- 3-4 cups water
- Mix together 2 cups water, sugar and lemon peel in a pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer away for about 5 minutes until sugar is completely dissolved.
- Juice about 5 lemons (Meyer Lemons are the best if you can get them!). Place into the blender.
- Cut off the tops of the strawberries and put into the blender with the lemon juice. Whirl it all together until the strawberries are completely torn to bits.
- Strain into a large pitcher. Add sugar water as well (also strain).
- Add 3-4 cups cold water (or to taste). Stick into the fridge to chill until dinner time (or lemonade drinking time).
I love this. I think you forgot to type in the type of booze you added though (j/k!).
I bought those super cheap strawberries from H Mart too. But they go bad so quickly. I have to toss them in trash after two days b/c they start getting moldy and yuck.
I’ve been looking for a cheap blender. Where did you get yours from? I was checking out Kohls the other day b/c I had a 30% off coupon. I heard their appliance section is pretty decent.
Hi Faye – Haha, booze free this one. But easy to add per glass 🙂
I used a whole thing of strawberries in one day so I didn’t have to worry about them going bad! For once!
We have a Vitamix blender, I’m not sure where it was from or how much it cost since I didn’t purchase it. But it is all kinds of awesome! You can make SO many things in it – nut butters, milkshakes, soups, sauces – I even made powdered sugar in it! Insane.