Homemade Strawberry Lemonade

Put a pot of 12 cups of water on to boil. Add the zest of 6 lemons into the water. Don’t grate the whites of the lemons, just the outer yellow zest. The white stuff is bitter.

Next, cut the lemons in half and juice each of them into the water. I find that a wooden reamer does a great job of getting all the summery flavor out of the lemons. Don’t worry about the seeds, the lemonade will be strained later so it’s okay if they fall into the pot.

Stir in 3 cups of sugar. Lightly boil and stir water until sugar is dissolved.

While the water is boiling, fill a blender with about 8 cups of fresh (stems removed) or defrosted frozen strawberries.

Use the pulse or low setting to blend strawberries. Using a higher setting will make them foamy – try to prevent the foaminess by using low setting. You can also use a food processor. Blend until the texture is like a chunky jam or even smoother.

Add blended strawberries into the pot of lemonade. Stir and allow to simmer for a few minutes then remove it from the heat.

Allow lemonade to cool enough so that it is easy to pour. Then pour it through a stainer into a pitcher or bowl. You do this to remove all seeds, pulp, and berry pieces.

A spoon is helpful to free strainer up a little bit. The larger the strainer, the easier this is to do. You may have to rinse the strainer out often as it can clogged up and will stop working.

Allow the mixture to cool to room temp and then chill in refrigerator.

For large parties, I love to put the homemade lemonade into canning jars with plastic lids and serve the jars out of a large, old-fashioned tub filled with ice. This makes every party better.

Optional: Use 8 lemons and 2 cups of sugar if you prefer a tart lemonade over a very sweet lemonade.