You Need To Try Pink Lemons

If you’re reading this and can’t believe you’ve lived your whole life thinking pink lemons were a fruit that existed only in a fairytale, I feel you: Up until this past weekend, I too thought they were purely a marketing scheme. When my friend initially said she was going to be fancy and put pink lemons in her party punch, I looked at her and shot back, “You mean grapefruit?”

I shouldn’t have been so surprised, considering my mind had just been blown with summer’s arrival of cotton candy grapes (which are very real and taste like COTTON CANDY). My friend was referring to variegated pink lemons, which are grown as a specialty farmers’ market produce item in Southern California. They’re now snatched up by fancy restaurants and top chefs for their floral flavor, but they weren’t always prized: Pink lemons were first discovered as a mutant on a Eureka lemon tree in a California backyard around 1930.

The lemons are visual stunners, especially compared to their solid cousins: They have variegated yellow-and-green-striped skin (when the green fades you know the fruit is ripe) and blush-pink flesh (thanks to lycopene, the antioxidant that gives grapefruits their ruby hue) that gets pinker as they ripen. The catch? The juice runs clear, not pink. But don’t despair, pink lemons taste less tart than regular lemons (win), with a more fruity, floral flavor, making them ideal for desserts, such as lemon bars or lemon meringue pie, or in fruit water.

You can find variegated pink lemons at most specialty produce stores or online.

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