How to Make Homemade Lemonade in 3 Easy Steps


When it comes to refreshing summer-time drinks, you can’t beat a glass of old-fashioned, fresh-squeezed lemonade! It’s tart, cool and delicious, and it’s super-easy to make!  Today I’ll show you how to make homemade lemonade in 3 easy steps with 3 ingredients: fresh lemons, sugar and water!

How to Make Lemonade with Real Lemons

My boys love lemonade!  Yellow lemonade, pink lemonade, lemonade from the can, lemonade from the carton… they’ll drink it anyway you serve it and they drink it all year ’round. For a real treat, several weeks ago, I decided to make homemade lemonade for the first time, and WOW, it was amazing!

Homemade lemonade is such a classic summer-time treat, perfect for lazy days by the pool or a backyard BBQ with family and friends.

(By the way, if you love lemon recipes, you’ll want to check out my luscious lemon delight as well!)

Easy Homemade Lemonade RecipeEasy Homemade Lemonade Recipe

Making Lemonade is Easier than you Think

I was surprised and completely delighted to find out how easy it is to make fresh squeezed lemonade, and I’m not kidding you, my guys can’t get enough of it!

Because it only takes a few minutes to whip up a fresh batch, I make some every few days, and we’ve been enjoying old-fashioned, fresh-squeezed lemonade all summer long!

Let me show you how to make homemade lemonade that’s so easy and delicious you’ll never buy store-bought again.

To make fresh-squeezed lemonade, you’ll need:

ingredients for homemade lemonade - lemons sugar and wateringredients for homemade lemonade - lemons sugar and water

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 5 lemons
  • 5 more cups water

How To Make Homemade Lemonade In 3 Easy Steps:

  1. simple syrup (see instructions below)
  2. squeeze the lemons
  3. mix it all together

Let’s start with the simple syrup.

What is Simple Syrup?

Simple syrup is simply a solution of sugar and water. Sugar is added to water, and the solution is heated to dissolve the sugar. The result is a liquid sugar that’s used to sweeten drinks. Because the sugar has been dissolved, it won’t settle to the bottom of your glass.

The thought of making simple syrup always intimidated me in the past. In fact, it’s probably the one reason why I’d never made lemonade from scratch before. Ha! How silly! Simple syrup couldn’t be any easier to make. It truly is SIMPLE. Seriously!  It only takes about 2 minutes.

How To Make Simple Syrup:

  1. Combine 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a small pot and stir over medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.  That’s it!
  2. Remove from heat, and let it cool while you’re squeezing your lemons.

How easy was that?  You can see here that my 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar produced a cup and a half of simple syrup.

how to make simple syrup for homemade lemonadehow to make simple syrup for homemade lemonade

Next step: squeeze the lemons!

This is my favourite step in making lemonade because the smell of freshly-squeezed lemons is one of my favourite scents ever! One whiff of a lemon or a lime, and I’m in heaven. It’s been that way since I was a little kid. You may recall me talking about my love of citrus fruits in my key lime pie martini recipe.

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How To Squeeze Lemons:

OK, so , there are two ways that I know of to squeeze a lemon.  The first method calls for an old fashioned lemon juicer.

glass lemon juicer and lemonsglass lemon juicer and lemons

You can get one of these handy squeezable lemon juicers but I love my glass juicer.  It seriously gets every single drop of lemon juice out of a lemon.

If you don’t have a lemon juicer, don’t fret; you can squeeze a lemon with a fork!

How To Squeeze A Lemon With A Fork:

This is a fun and easy way to squeeze a lemon. You’ll be surprised by how much lemon juice you can actually get out of a lemon this way!  This method works almost as well as the glass juicer.

This is how to do it:

how to squeeze a lemon with a forkhow to squeeze a lemon with a fork
  1. Cut lemon in half and spear with a fork.
  2. Hold the lemon half in one hand and the fork in the other.
  3. Squeeze the lemon in one hand while pumping the fork up and down with the other hand, as if it were the handle of a water pump.
  4. Continue to squeeze and pump until you’ve extracted all the lemon juice that you can.

Strain Your Lemon Juice:

Pour the  lemon juice through a strainer, and mash the pulp around to get every last drop of lemony goodness.

Turn Lemons Into Delicious, Fresh Lemonade:

Now, pour your lemon juice into a pitcher.

Add the 5 cups of water.

Add as much or as little of the simple syrup as you like.

The nice thing about making homemade lemonade is you can sweeten it to your personal liking. I use all of the simple syrup to make a pitcher of my lemonade, but you can make your lemonade to suit your taste.  Sample a bit as you’re mixing the syrup into the juice, and your taste buds will let you know when you’re happy with it.

I have to show you a the cool pitcher that I keep our homemade lemonade in. It’s an infuser pitcher. There’s a column in the middle of the jug which attaches to the lid, and you can fill it with fruit to make fruit-infused water, or to make your fruit juice fruitier. I fill that column with several lemon wedges to add some extra tartness to my lemonade.

Of course, you can always just float lemon slices or wedges in a regular jug to get the same effect.

infuser pitcher filled with lemon wedges and fresh-squeezed lemonadeinfuser pitcher filled with lemon wedges and fresh-squeezed lemonade

Pop your lemonade into the fridge to chill it, or serve it immediately over ice!

How to Make Lemonade with Real LemonsHow to Make Lemonade with Real Lemons

Mmmmm!  So refreshing!

A creative way to use empty lemon rinds

Save the lemon rinds when you make homemade lemonade because you can do something kind of cool with them. Check it out:

lemon rinds and mini muffin tinlemon rinds and mini muffin tin

I wash the outsides of the lemon rinds and place them all into a mini-muffin tin.

lemon rind cups filled with waterlemon rind cups filled with water

Then I fill them with water, and put them in the freezer overnight.

lemon halves filled with icelemon halves filled with ice

Now I have a bunch of icy lemon cups to toss into a fruit punch or a jug of ice water, or yes, into a jug of homemade lemonade!

You know what I want to try making next? This Homemade Strawberry Lemonade that I found over at Spend with Pennies.  It looks amazing!

easy fresh-squeezed lemonade recipeeasy fresh-squeezed lemonade recipe

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Homemade Lemonade

This old-fashioned lemonade is easy to make with just 3 simple ingredients. 

Total Time15 minutes

Course: Drinks

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Fresh Lemons, Homemade Lemonade, Summer Drink

Servings: 8

Calories: 116kcal

Ingredients

  • 5 lemons
  • 5 more cups water

Instructions

To Make Simple Syrup

  • Combine 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a small pot and stir over medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

  • Allow to cool while you’re squeezing your lemons.

To Make Lemonade

  • Squeeze lemons with a lemon juicer or a fork (see post for the how-to).

  • Strain lemon juice into a jug.

  • Add 5 cups of water.

  • Add simple syrup to taste.

  • Chill and serve over ice.

Nutrition

Calories: 116kcal | Carbohydrates: 31g | Sodium: 3mg | Potassium: 93mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 26g | Vitamin A: 15IU | Vitamin C: 35.8mg | Calcium: 18mg | Iron: 0.4mg

More easy summer recipes:

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