How to make Lemoncillo (Italian Lemon drink with vodka)

capcrnch

Jan 8, 2008

Food

This is a family recipe for Lemoncillo. Lemoncillo is an Italian drink that takes lemon zest and vodka (or everclear) and combines the two for an amazing cocktail!

Make Limoncello (Lemon Chello)

Ingredients:

1500ml vodka or everclear
4 cups sugar
5 cups water
15 lemons (washed and cleaned)
1-gallon glass jar

In our case, we use Absolut Vodka. We like the taste and the bottles are cool. HA!
You can use cheaper vodka if you want, but we’re loyal to Absolut.

1500ml is a Costco sized bottle. You can obviously use 2 750ml bottles if that’s easier.

Instructions:

Empty all but a ¼ cup of vodka into your glass jar.

Zest all 15 lemons.
Zesting is a process where you “peel” the lemon skin. You’re only going after the outer skin, nothing more. You can pick up a zesting tool at Meijer, Target or any other store that sells kitchen utensils. You drag the tool across the skin and you’ll get the zest you see in the bowl.
Be careful not to dig too deep into the lemon. If you go too deep, you get too much of the pith and that’s no good for your mix.
This is about 4 lemons worth of zesting…

This is about 10 lemons worth of zesting…

Put the zest into your glass jar, which should already have vodka sitting in it.

Remember that 1/4 cup of vodka we left in the bottle? Well go ahead and pour that into the bowl your rinds were in. Swirl it around a little and then pour it into the glass jar. The reason you do this is to ensure you get all the lemon oil that the rinds left behind. The oil is the magic to the limoncello, so you dont want to lose any!

We’re going to let this sit for 1 week. I recommend clearing a small spot in your closet and putting this in there. The even temperature and lack of sunlight will help the vodka and lemon oils do their lovemaking thing.

After the week, we’re going to finish our batch.
Bring the 6 cups of water to a boil. Add the sugar and remove from the heat.
Stir until it has all dissolved.
Cover it up and let it cool to room temp.

Strain the vodka mix into your saucepan and stir into the sugar concoction. The rinds can now be thrown away, they wont do us any good now.
Stir the contents of your saucepan for about 1 minute, then pour from the saucepan back into the glass jar.

Store the glass jar for at least 1 more week.

Keep in mind...
The longer you let it sit, the better it will be in the long run.
Usually we store ours for 1 week, add the sugar mix, and then store it for 3 more weeks.
At the 3-week mark, we pour from the large jar into smaller glass bottles.
We then store the smaller, more manageable bottles in the freezer or give some to friends.

Make sure your storage jars have either a cork seal or a rubber stopper. Its important to keep what’s inside the jar in and what’s outside of the jar out!

You can drink your Limoncello straight, add to champagne or mix it with another drink of your choice..

Its light enough to drink straight. It doesn’t have a harsh “alcohol taste”… It’s smooth and sweet.

It's a super easy thing to make and its SO good and worthwhile when its done.

ENJOY!