Lemonade (and other citrus-ade)

[MaggieTheCat]

So my husband and I made homemade mint lemonade last weekend:

12 large lemons, juiced (about 2 1/4 cups juice)
6 cups boiling water, divided
about 7 tablespoons dried spearmint leaves
3 cups sugar

Pour half the boiling water (3 cups) over the sugar and stir to completely dissolve, making simple syrup. Pour the rest of the boiling water over the dried mint and allow to steep while you juice the lemons.

Strain lemon juice, steeped spearmint water, and simple syrup together in a pitcher. Top with about half as much water as you have liquid already (we didn't actually measure, I'd guess it was around 5 cups, maybe.) Chill, then gulp greedily as it is delicious.

Seriously, delicious. I've never made homemade lemonade before, let alone mint lemonade, but this was one of the best drinks I've ever had. It did make a lot, but we brought it to our D&D group on Sunday and only brought about 3 servings home.

So now we're thinking about other flavor combinations we can make. We're thinking we might try orangeade next, and I was wondering what we could add to it. I'm thinking ginger. We have some ginger tea we could steep in place of the mint that we used in the lemonade, and I might throw a piece of fresh ginger in with the ginger tea to bump up the ginger flavor. We might cut back on the sugar a little, too, since I'm sure oranges will be sweeter than lemons.

Does anyone else have any yummy suggestions or recipes?

[AccountingDrone]

how about going medieval on their arses?

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html

I am particularly fond of sekanjabin myself.

[Dilorenzo]

Lemons are without a doubt my favorite thing. Anything lemon is awesome.

Now I will have to go out and find some and make that recipe.

[Geek King]

I'm fond of adding split cherries or cut strawberries to lemon/lime-ade myself.

You can also add cucumber slices to lemonade to surprisingly good effect.

[thansal]

So, 2 of my all time favorite flavours were just mentioned: Lime and Ginger

A simple way of getting a lot of ginger flavour is to just puree it in a blender and press it through cheese cloth (or whatever). The advantage of this is that you don't have to peel it!

You can also boil grated ginger in whatever, however I think that pureeing it is the better system. The one thing about boiling the ginger is that you don't have to strain it if you don't want to. I mean, ginger is great stuff, and you can just leave the ginger pulp in your drink.



Admittedly, my favorite Limeade recipe is 2 parts Tequila, 1 part Cointreau, and 1 part lime juice, straight up with a little bit of salt.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Strawberry lemonade or cherry limeade...yummy.

Hmmm...I have some spearmint tea here...it's drinkable by itself but I'm not crazy about it. Gotta come up with some ideas for that (gonna try it iced one of these days). I only have about 2 ounces of it, so it's not too much.

My work cafeteria recently started selling fresh-squeezed lemonade; finally tried it the other day. I don't know if it was just an off day but it needed a tad more sugar.

[TheSHAD0W]

If you aren't a teetotaler, you may want to look into making mead and some of its variants. Lemon, apple or other fruit juices or flavors can be added to the mix with very interesting results. Maple mead, anyone?

[MaggieTheCat]

Mead would be awesome...I've only had mead once, but I remember liking it. However, while I'm sure the rest of our gaming group would enjoy it, my husband does not drink alcohol, period.

BE, try steeping your mint tea in boiling water and adding it to lemonade, if you want to try the recipe I posted above. We thought the mint-lemon combo went really well together. I also thought that maybe watermelon would go well with lemonade or limeade. Just puree a cup or two of it until it's mostly liquid and add it to fresh lemon/limeade...since it's mostly water, I don't think you'd even have to strain it, unless it has seeds in it.

I've heard of adding cucumbers to stuff like punches, I might try that too. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to cherries so I can't do cherry-limeade unless I just add cherry flavoring. Might be able to do strawberry, though, if we strain it really well to get the seeds out...my husband likes strawberry flavor but not strawberries themselves due to the seeds.

[Jester]

dried spearmint leaves

Does anyone else have any yummy suggestions or recipes?

Suggestion 1: If you can find it in your area, use fresh mint in place of the dried. All you have to do is crush it a bit and then steep it, and you get amazing mint flavor. Probably need a lot less of it too, incidentally. (But as I've never made this, you will want to experiment to get the right amount.)

Lemons are without a doubt my favorite thing. Anything lemon is awesome.

You'd love this, then...

Right after I gave up caffeine in 1990 (that is not a typo, I said 1990), I found myself having trouble waking up at work without my usual cola. (I've never drank coffee or tea.) So, for my day shifts, when I first walked in to work, I would grab a big wedge of lemon, and just bite right into it. Now that would WAKE YOU UP, and in a big way.

Admittedly, my favorite Limeade recipe is 2 parts Tequila, 1 part Cointreau, and 1 part lime juice, straight up with a little bit of salt.

I was about to correct you and tell you that it really should be 3 parts tequila.

And that's when I realized I'm an idiot. Because that's when I noticed that you did not mention using any sour mix, and without sour mix, the ratio of ingredients changes. So me, the big bad bartender, who HAS made sour mix-less margaritas before, is clearly a blind idiot.

...my husband does not drink alcohol, period.

My condolences to you.

I've heard of adding cucumbers to stuff like punches, I might try that too.

I have seen cucumbers used successfully in some cocktails, and it really works.

Suggestion #2: Try using some sweet basil. Especially with ginger, but you can use it in other combinations. Basil works remarkably well in drinks; this, too, I have seen in cocktails.

Suggestion #3: Don't make the mistake I made and assume that cilantro would also work in a cocktail.

It doesn't.

[MaggieTheCat]

Oh, I was definitely thinking about using fresh mint. But I have a huge bag of dried sitting in my pantry that needs to be used for SOMETHING, and this was a good application for it.

[Jester]

Fair enough, but I think you'll be amazed by the difference between fresh and dried.

Side note: working at a bar that showcases rum as I do, and working in a tropical island as I do, I and my coworkers make a lot of mojitos. And very often we hear people surprised that we're "actually using fresh mint!" And of course we ask them what they've seen. And we hear all kinds of horror stories, including (but not limited to) mint-flavored syrup, mint soda, and dried mint. Teas and Ades are one thing, but it is NOT a mojito if you don't use FRESH mint! The whole point of muddling the mint with the limes is to extract their natural oils....and dried mint has lost those oils.

Here endeth the mojito rant. Now....back to teas and ades.

[Food Lady]

I'm fond of clove as a companion to orange, with cinnamon, preferably. Cherry limeade is good; I'd use the tart red pie cherries, not the darker sweet cherries. I'm thinking sweetened grapefruit juice would also go well with cherries.

[thansal]

I'm fond of clove as a companion to orange, with cinnamon, preferably. Cherry limeade is good; I'd use the tart red pie cherries, not the darker sweet cherries. I'm thinking sweetened grapefruit juice would also go well with cherries.

That sounds really good....

Like a mulled citrus-ade. Clove, cinnamon, whatever you like.

Does any one have a method of making a bitter orange additive (Either a syrup or unsweetened?). Could you get away with simply boiling orange rind? Or would you need to use Orange oil? I love the bitter orange flavor you get from some confections as well as Grand Marnier. That with spices as an additive to a lemon or limeade would be great in my mind.

[MoonCat]

Get some food-grade lavender and steep a little in with your lemonade. AWESOME

[TheSHAD0W]

In case you didn't know, mint grows like a weed. If you're fond of mint, throw that dry stuff away! Then set up a pot in the kitchen window. Freshly picked mint whenever you want it!