Limoncello

When I was little my parents took us on a family vacation to Italy. We started in Rome where my mom famously told a server that we wanted everything on the menu - and he brought us exactly that! At the end of the meal, he brought my brother and I little desserts, and served limoncello for the adults. That is the first time I remember seeing limoncello - but as we worked our way south on that trip we saw oodles of it: steeping in windows in little old shops, served at restaurants, imitated in little soaps. The scent of it was intoxicating, bright and lemony as the lemon trees that grew all over. Now that I am an adult, limoncello transports me back to the feeling of joy and wonder I felt on that trip. I am pretty sure it is liquid sunshine. Limoncello is a flexible thing - the measurements here are adaptable, adjust them to your liking.

Ingredients:

1 liter of grain alcohol, or the highest proof vodka you can find.

14 lemons

1,050 grams sugar

6 1/3 cups water

jars

Prep jars for steeping so that they are SUPER clean, I use two quart-sized ball jars. Give your lemons a good scrub too - you want them to be nice and clean. Anything on your lemon peel ends up in your drink.

Using a vegetable peeler, peel the yellow rind off the lemons, getting as little of the bitter white pith as possible.

Use a very sharp paring knife to remove any white pith that remains on the lemons yellow lemon peels.

Divide the cleaned lemon peels equally into the two jars, then divide the grain alcohol into them, covering the peels. Seal the jars up.

Let the mixture steep in a cool dark place. I leave them in my linen closet. I have done this for as short a time as 2 weeks and as long as 8 months (don’t look at me like that I was busy). The two week steep was perfectly adequate, but I think 1 month is a good sweet spot. The lemon peels will have seeped all of their color and lemony goodness into the alcohol and they will be pale and brittle.

Measure the sugar and water into a large stockpot. Make simple syrup by bringing the mixture to a gentle simmer over medium heat until the sugar is fully dissolved. Take the syrup off the heat.

Filter the lemon peels from the alcohol, then add the lemon infused alcohol to the still warm syrup, giving it a really good stir with a very clean spoon. If you are using vodka and not everclear - you will need to use less simple syrup - you don’t want the alcohol to drop below 30% of the mixture. Allow this mixture to cool, and then bottle it. I like to buy pretty bottles online to make them extra snazzy, but you could continue on in ball jars no problem

Ta Da! The limoncello is done! It gets mellower and smoother as it sits, so letting it rest for an additional month in the bottle is usually recommended. Most of my bottles end up sitting longer than that once they’re sealed up as this recipe makes a lot of booze, but I open one bottle right away to drink too. You can make cute labels for the bottles, or add shrink wrap to the tops for a really snazzy finish.

Note: You can mix it up! Use oranges for an orangecello. I haven’t tried limes or grapefruits but I bet they would both work beautifully. The world is your oyster.