There’s a specific kind of disappointment reserved for reaching into the fruit bowl for a lemon and finding it’s gone soft, wrinkled, or worse, spotted with mould at the base, especially when you’re fairly sure you bought it just last week. Lemons have a reputation for looking sturdy but actually being fairly high-maintenance; once you take a closer look at how quickly they lose moisture and where you store them and how, it makes a genuinely dramatic difference to how long they last. The good news is fixing this doesn’t require anything complicated, just a slightly better understanding of what a lemon actually needs to stay fresh. Here’s how to store lemons properly, whether you’re keeping them whole, cut, juiced, or planning ahead for weeks.
