The Slicing Method To Get 100% Of Juice Out Of A Lime

When you cut a lime, you probably just the lime into two parts, half-and-half. While this is an incredibly common way to cut limes, it's not the most efficient way to get juice from it. What, then, is the "best" way to cut a lime?

According to an illustration posted on Reddit, what you should do is cut the lime into thirds. First, cut the left or right side of the lime near — not down — the middle, before repeating with the alternate side. When done correctly, you should have two slices of lime, with the middle part of the lime still intact. Take the middle of the lime and then cut that into thirds, giving you one rectangular segment and two half-moons. This method, according to the illustration, should yield the maximum amount of juice when the lime pieces are squeezed. Some Reddit users also claimed that this method was the best way to extract the juice from a lime without using a juicer.

"Inside of a citrus fruit you basically have a bunch of little sacs filled with juice," explained one user, "and in order to get the juice out of the fruit, you have to cut or crush the little juice containing sacs inside." The user explained that, by cutting off-center as the illustration shows, your knife bursts or ruptures the juice sacs and allows you to get more juice from it. When you cut down the center, many of these fruit sacs remain intact and thus don't give their juice.

If you're not particularly gifted with a knife, or just don't want to master a special way of cutting fruit, there's another way to get the most juice out of your lime as possible. This method involves warming the fruit up for a bit before you cut it.

A very simple way to do this involves you putting your limes in the microwave and heating them from anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds. You're not trying to superheat or steam the juices out of them, but you want them to be somewhat warm to the touch when you take them out of the microwave. This method works by way of heating those juice sacs we mentioned earlier, which either break from the pressure or become much easier to burst when squeezed.

Another simple method to getting more juice from your lime is to roll it against the counter. Simply press your palm against the surface of the lime and then gently, but firmly, roll the lime back and forth a few times. This method also ruptures the juice sacs, meaning that even if you cut the lime into halves rather than thirds, you can still get much more juice than you normally would. Both of these methods yield much more juice if you use a juicer or a reamer rather than trying to do it all by hand.

Let's say that you don't want to waste any time trying to master a new type of cutting method or throwing your limes in the microwave. What if, you wonder, there was a way you could just poke a hole in the lime and let all the juice flow out? If one viral lemon-juicing method is to be believed, you can do something that's basically just that.

As one TikTok video explains, one can take a skewer and jam it through one end of the lemon — the left or right nibs of the lemon that are capped with those slight bumps. Pierce the lemon halfway through and then remove the skewer. Hold the lemon with the pierced end above a bowl and then squeeze — if done correctly, the lemon juice will stream out through the hole, similar to squeezing ketchup out of a ketchup bottle. This method bursts most, if not all, of the juice sacs without having to cut the fruit in half first.

Although this method is done using a lemon, it would stand to reason that using this "pierce-and-squeeze" method on a lime would yield very similar results. It's important to remember, however, that the instrument you're using should be skinny and sharpened at one end and using something like a knife or fork would most likely tear the lemon apart instead of making a clean puncture.