The Clever Hack Martha Stewart Uses When Juicing Lemons

Have you ever taken a full bite out of a lemon? Probably not. While lemons may not be necessarily the most inviting and tastiest fruit to eat, they do serve a bigger purpose. According to Statista, 888,000 pounds of lemons were produced in 2018 in the United States. So while opting to take some bites out of the sour fruit might not be your jive, they certainly are in high demand for other uses. 

While the famous life saying, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" rings true here, there are actually a lot of other ways to use the fruit. From being used in homemade blueberry lemon sweet rolls, classic lemon meringue pie, lemon basil pesto, or even as a DIY lemon household cleaner, these fruits are very versatile when it comes to their purpose in a home.

If you find using lemons is a usual thing in your routine, you might have to juice them once in a while for a recipe or even to add some fresh juice to your tea. It can always be a hassle though to cut open a lemon and try to squeeze out the sour and zesty juice, leaving a mess or even some painful zings if you have any cuts on your fingers. Those days can be left in the past though thanks to Martha Stewart's clever lemon juicing hack.

When trying to juice lemon — or basically any citrus fruit for that matter — sometimes it can be tricky. Lemons have a peculiar shape to them, bulging out on the sides with their ends, it can be routinely hard to fit a whole lemon inside a citrus press. Even if you cut the lemon in half, you're still left with a harder-than-heck half of a lemon with its weird ends to try to squeeze.

Martha Stewart though has a clever hack for this. As shown on an episode of the "Martha Stewart Show," the Domestic Goddess is seen putting her lemon juicing hack up for the world to see. Instead of trying to fit a whole or half a lemon inside the presser, Stewart cuts off both ends of the lemon which she claims will be both easier to juice and will yield more juice.

"It's hard to fit those giant lemons into this little lemon squeezer. This is a little thing I discovered...I cut off the ends without getting into the juice, because then you get more juice," Stewart said on her show.

Not sold on using Martha Stewart's lemon juicing hack or don't have a citrus presser? No problem. According to TikTok, you can actually squeeze lemon juice out of the fruit by merely poking a hole at the top of the lemon.

To try this lemon juicing hack, just follow along with the TikTok video. Captioned "I was today years old when I found out you could do this," the video shows a person poking a hole at the top of the lemon with a skewer. Of course, you could probably get away with using a chopstick, sewing needle, meat thermometer, or anything with a narrow and pointed tip. With the hole side down, you should see a perfect stream of fresh lemon juice coming out when you squeeze the fruit. This also prevents not many (or none at all) seeds or pulp from coming out as well.

Alpha Foodie takes this hack a step further by recommending first to roll the lemon, or microwave it, to make it easier to squeeze. Without needing to cut into the actual lemon, you can also save the lemon for a couple of days in the refrigerator.