A LIMONCELLO lover has shared her tried-and-true method for making the beloved liqueur.
She said she learned the key step to the homemade recipe from an “old Italian lady.”
DD (@dishin_withdd) demonstrated how to make the drink in a viral video on TikTok.
Limoncello is a popular lemon-flavored liqueur that is often served chilled on its own.
It comes from Italy and is produced mainly in the south where there are an abundance of citrus fruits.
The lemon-flavored drink is easy to sip on thanks to its sweetness, which makes it a popular post-dinner digestif.
DD started off by peeling her lemons following an age-old technique.
“See how you have to peel it?” she said while removing the yellow part of the skin from the lemon.
“An old Italian lady once told me, ‘no pith, no white.'”
The pith is the softer white skin under the harder yellow outer peel of the lemon.
“Try not to get the pith,” she reiterated.
After peeling nine organic lemons, she placed the peels in a large glass jar and added a bottle of Everclear.
She noted that she used to think limoncello was made with vodka, but traditional recipes call for grain alcohol.
DD explained that the mixture should be left to marinate for 20 days, saying it will start to turn yellow.
She recommended giving the jar a good shake every few days for best results.
After the 20 days are up, she mixes it with sugar and filtered water.
“Enjoy,” she said, signing off on her simple recipe.
Several TikTok users weighed in on her limoncello recipe in the comments section of the viral video.
“You don’t need added preservatives, nothing can survive the Everclear,” one viewer joked.
“OK the Everclear is crazy but a trick from my Italian grandma is to freeze the lemons and use a veggie peeler — helps avoid the pith,” another added.
“The best limoncello I ever had used honey instead of sugar,” a third commented.
“Thank you for motivating people,” someone else wrote. “Making limoncello is the greatest. You also could use a high proof vodka. Thank you for sharing this.”
“Little pith isn’t too bad, just not a lot of it,” one more chimed in.
