Pitcher Limonada with Lime-Peel Sugar

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

The limeade you get at a Mexican or Colombian lunch counter, built the way bartenders do it: the lime peels get muddled into the sugar first so their oils dissolve into a fragrant syrup before any juice or water goes near the pitcher. That one 45-minute rest is the whole difference between flat sweet-sour water and a limonada that smells like a lime grove. Tart, barely sweet, and endlessly drinkable over crushed ice.

Ingredients

• 10 limes, preferably thin-skinned Key or Persian limes
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 pinch fine sea salt

• 1 cup fresh lime juice (from the peeled limes above, plus 2–3 extra if needed)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 6 cups cold filtered water
• 1/2 cup hot water, for dissolving the syrup

• crushed or cubed ice
• 1 small bunch fresh mint or hierbabuena sprigs
• 1 lime, sliced into thin wheels
• flaky salt, for the glass rims (optional)

• 2 cups chilled sparkling water or club soda

Instructions

1. Scrub the 10 limes under warm water and dry them well. Using a vegetable peeler or sharp paring knife, remove the zest from all 10 limes in wide strips, taking as little of the white pith as possible. Set the peeled limes aside on the counter (they juice better at room temperature).
2. Put the lime peels, 1 cup sugar, and the pinch of fine sea salt in a medium bowl. Press and rub the peels into the sugar with a muddler or the back of a wooden spoon for a full 2 minutes, bruising them until the sugar looks damp and smells intensely of lime.
3. Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for 45 minutes to 2 hours. The sugar will pull the oils out of the peels and turn into a thick, pale-green slurry. Stir once or twice along the way.
4. Halve the peeled limes and juice them, straining out seeds, until you have 1 cup of lime juice; juice 2 or 3 extra limes if you come up short. Add the 2 tablespoons lemon juice, which rounds off lime's sharp edge.
5. Pour 1/2 cup hot (not boiling) water over the lime-peel sugar and stir for about 1 minute, until every grain of sugar has dissolved. Let it stand 5 minutes, then pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a 2-quart pitcher, pressing hard on the peels to squeeze out the last of the syrup. Discard the peels.
6. Add the lime and lemon juice to the pitcher, then stir in 6 cups cold water. Taste: it should be bracingly tart with just enough sugar to keep it friendly. Add cold water 1/4 cup at a time if it's too intense, or a teaspoon of sugar at a time if your limes ran sour.
7. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, until thoroughly cold (the flavor tightens up and tastes less sweet as it chills). Stir well before serving, since the syrup settles.
8. Fill tall glasses with crushed ice, add a mint sprig and a lime wheel to each, and pour the limonada over. For a sparkling version, fill glasses two-thirds with limonada and top with chilled sparkling water. Rim the glasses with flaky salt first if you like the Mexican-restaurant version.
9. Keeps 3 days covered in the refrigerator; give it a hard stir and taste before pouring, as the citrus mellows overnight.

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Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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