Dehydrating Lemons

Drying lemons at home is a simple way to preserve citrus fruits for quick and accessible pantry storage. 

Anyone who has a lemon tree knows just how prolific they can be. As a kid, we’d harvest them by the bucketload from our backyard tree, and the branches would still be breaking under the weight of all the fruit we left behind.

We’d make lemonade, of course, but at a certain point, you need a reliable way to preserve lemons. I’ve made salt-cured lemons, but you can only use so many of those. Lemon marmalade and lemon curd are amazing, too, but there’s a lot of sugar.

When you dry lemon slices, they’re just lemons, and you can use them in both sweet and savory recipes. I love lemon slices in a cup of tea, but they also work really well topping roast salmon or chicken in the oven.

Best Lemons for Dehydrating

In the U.S. you can find lemons year-round in the grocery store, with different lemon varieties peaking in different seasons. Which varieties are best for dehydrating? That depends on your personal preferences.

If you prefer sour lemons, Eureka and Lisbon varieties are known for their tartness and are usually quite easy to find. Lisbon lemons have thinner peels, which can be preferable for dehydrating, but Eurekas are known for their fragrant, aromatic oils.

If sweeter is your inclination, Meyer and Ponderosa are spectacular choices. Meyer lemons have a thin, palatable skin which is much thinner than the larger, thick-skinned Ponderosa if the dehydrated peel bothers you.

Some top lemon varieties for dehydrating include:

• Meyer (thin skin, sweet)
• Ponderosa (thicker skin, larger)
• Eureka (thicker skin, aromatic)
• Lisbon (thin skin, tart)

Just make sure the lemons you choose are ripe, firm, and brightly colored as these are the best signs of freshness.

Preparing Lemons for Drying

When preparing to dehydrate lemons, it’s important to choose fruit that is fresh, ripe, and without any blemishes. Discard any bruised fruit, and save unripe lemons for future projects.

Begin by washing your lemons, removing any dirt or debris from the peel. If your lemons are store-bought, you may also wish to make a fruit wash with vinegar to remove their waxy coating. 

Next, give the lemons a quick dry with a towel and slice into sections ¼ to ⅛ of an inch thick. If you have one, you can use a Mandoline slicer to cut the most uniform slices, however, a good sharp knife will also do the trick.

Try to keep your slices as even as possible so they all dry at the same speed. A mix of thick and thin slices will result in some rounds being dry before others.

Remove any seeds from citrus wheels by using the tip of a knife. If you like, you can save those leftover seeds to use as a natural pectin in canning.

Temperature for Drying Lemons

Many current home dehydrators are outfitted with adjustable temperature settings so you can modify the temperature to whatever you’re dehydrating. This feature is incredibly beneficial for drying spices and herbs with delicate aromas which require lower drying temps.

Citrus fruits require more moderate temperatures for dehydrating around 135° F (57° C). This is high enough to dehydrate before spoiling occurs, but low enough that flavor is not compromised.

Both Excalibur and Cosori dehydrators come equipped with adjustable time and temperature settings. So, if you’re in the market for a new appliance, I recommend taking a peek at those. Economy models like Nesco’s stacking type don’t allow for temperature adjustments, defaulting instead to 160° to 165° F. 

These will effectively dry your lemon slices, but you’ll lose a lot of nuance in flavor and some of the delicate aromatics of the citrus fruit. Likewise, most ovens cannot be set below 170° F or so, and the result won’t be as high quality.

If an oven is your only avenue of dehydration for now, you may wish to invest in some wire racks to allow air circulation on all sides of your slices, such as these stainless steel oven-safe racks with trays underneath. They can be used both for jerky-making and fruit drying. 

How Long to Dehydrate Lemons?

Lemon slices will usually take about 3 to 7 hours to dehydrate in a dehydrator set to 135° F. 

Time can fluctuate based on slice-thickness, the size and type of lemon selected, and the ambient humidity in the room.

Humidity can play quite a large role in altering drying times for fruit — it’s more difficult to remove moisture from food when there’s a great deal of moisture in the air already. This is why dehydration times may be shorter in dryer locations than in more humid ones. 

Certain dehydrators like Excalibur come with a helpful guide that offers times based off of the ambient humidity. For lemons, it is as follows: 

• 10 to 30% Humidity: 3 Hours
• 31 to 50% Humidity: 4 Hours
• 51 to 70% Humidity: 5 Hours
• 71 to 80% Humidity: 6 Hours
• Above 80% Humidity: 7 Hours

The lemon slices are done when they are crisp and completely free of moisture. 

How to Dehydrate Lemons in a Dehydrator

Set your dehydrator to 135° F. Arrange lemon slices on dehydrator trays in a single layer, leaving sufficient space between the slices for airflow. 

Dehydrate for 3 to 7 hours, altering time as necessary for humidity. 

Know that smaller lemon slices will dehydrate faster than larger slices. Extra-juicy lemons will take longer as well.

Lemon slices are done when they are devoid of moisture and crisp.

How to Dehydrate Lemons in the Oven

Dehydrating in an oven will do the job, but you won’t get the exact same quality dehydrating at these higher temperatures. Most ovens don’t go below 170° F which is quite a bit higher than the ideal temperature for dehydrating citrus. However, if you have access to an oven with a convection fan, it may work quite well for dehydrating.

If you’re using your oven to dehydrate lemon slices, you’ll want to employ oven-safe cooling racks placed on top of baking sheets as these will allow for airflow on all sides of your lemon slices. Make sure your wire racks are oven-safe before using them for dehydrating though, not all cooling racks are oven-safe. 

(These stainless steel racks and sheets are oven-safe and hold up quite well.)

Set your oven as close to 135° F as it will allow (for most this will be 170° F) and dehydrate your lemon slices for around 2 to 4 hours. Ovens set at 200° F may dehydrate faster than this. Check your slices every 30 minutes or so for doneness.

You can also speed up the process by wedging a wooden spoon in the door of your oven to allow excess moisture to escape while running your vent hood. 

Fresh to Dried Yield

Drying fruit (and other items) removes moisture from the food so that harmful bacteria and mold cannot spoil it. One handy side effect is that food becomes lighter and smaller when dried due to this moisture loss. 

With fruits, the moisture content of home-dried items should be around 20 percent. Seeing that lemons have an average water content of 88 to 89%, much of their weight will be lost in dehydration.

As a result, you can expect the end weight of your lemons to be about 10 to 20% of their original weight after dehydration.

Ways to Use Dried Lemons

Although you may simply snack on dried lemon slices all on their own for a tart treat, there are quite a few additional uses for dried lemon slices, be they beverages, baked goods, or savory recipes. 

Dehydrated lemon slices don’t rehydrate terribly well for recipes — instead, they are commonly added to drinks and desserts to flavor or decorate.

Dried lemons make an eye-catching garnish for citrusy cakes and other baked goodies like these lemon, thyme, and rosemary cupcakes.

To quench your thirst, add dried lemons to hot tea for a lemony flavor, mix with other dehydrated fruit for a dehydrated fruit lemonade, or top cocktails with dried slices like this beautiful lavender lemon martini.

You can also pulse dehydrated lemon slices to make a citrus powder for use in rubs for meat and fish, seasoning salads and soups, or adding some citrus flavor to pasta and rice. Citrus powder is made by breaking up citrus slices, pulsing in a grinder, and drying the powder once more in the oven.

Lemon powder, in particular, can be blended with sugar to rim cocktail glasses for drinks, added to cakes, or mixed with powdered sugar to make a lemony icing.

Ways to Preserve Lemons

Drying lemon slices is not the only way to preserve lemons! An assortment of beverages and spreads can also be made. Try your hand at lemon wine or consider canning lemonade. You can also blend with fruits like watermelon and strawberry for a fantastic canned lemonade concentrate. 

Lemons can also be canned, made into curd, or preserved as confit.

• Homemade Lemon Wine 
• Canning Lemonade (& Lemonade Concentrate) 
• Canning Lemons 
• Canning Lemon Curd 
• How to Make Preserved Lemons (Lemon Confit) 
• Natural Citrus Seed Pectin for Canning 

Dehydrator Recipes

Looking for more dehydrator recipes?

• Dehydrating Carrots
• How to Make Fruit Leather
• How to Make Yogurt in the Dehydrator