I can see maybe if you are making a key lime pie or lemon curd, but even then I’m not sold. But if you are talking the equivalent of the juice of one lemon or lime in a recipe with other ingredients, be honest- can you really tell the difference? If not, why do cooks (such as AB) make such a big deal about minute details like these?
I don’t cook by the way, it just makes me oddly annoyed when I see shows where they tell the home cook to go through all these added steps and costs that I don’t think affect the finished product.
ReaLime and ReaLemon are your friends. Have them ready. Heck, sometimes a drop of vinegar will do if all you need is some acidity to brighten a dark plate.
If cooked, not really. If added at the end of a recipe, yes. A squeeze of lemon or lime in a dressing - or sauce or soup - finished 2 minutes before serving does taste better.
Fresh is always best, but when it is going to be cooked, I just use ReaLemon. Unless I have lemons in the crisper, of course. But that is rare. Limes, OTOH, we almost always have on hand, so fresh is the call.
Because they do affect the finished product. Quality ingredients make quality food. Keeping a few fresh lemons in the fridge is not a hardship or expensive. Your food will taste better, and you won’t have to eat all the preservatives and crap they put into products like RealLemon.
Will the food be ruined if you use FakeLemon? Probably not. But if you’re a chef, you’re looking to make the best food you possibly can, and more often than not these small touches make a difference.
So if I present a hardcore food person two identical dishes, one made with the juice of one lemon/lime, one with the store-bought equivalent, they would be able to tell which is which?
“Your food will taste better” and “these small touches make a difference.” Athena, are you saying that you can tell the difference if someone uses RealLemon instead of freshly squeezed lemon juice in a cooked dish? That’s the question.
I can certainly understand the philosophy of using the freshest possibly ingredients all the time, and certainly if you used subpar ingredients consistently, or used several subpar ingredients in a single dish, you could tell. But is this a case where the substitution is really likely to make a detectable difference?
Depends on how much is used, but I usually can. I used to use RealLemon a good bit, until I tasted two of the same dishes made with each. The difference in fresh & “from concentrate” citrus juice is rather large.
Also, Alton Brown is quick to tell you when it is okay to substitute canned for fresh. He isn’t making this stuff up.
My mother and I have been known to tell the difference.
Lemons don’t last forever but the only times I’ve had to throw away an unopened lemon it was because I was moving. I won’t buy ten-pound bags, of course.
Squeezing a bit of lemon on a slice of naked fish does more for its flavor than any batter or sauce you care to name, at least for my taste. I use them for chicken and for rice too.
Cooking vs non-cooking is the key distinction here, as prior posters have already indicated. Heat will remove much of the delicate subtlety (and, indeed, flavor) from most citrus juices, just as it does from, say, fine olive oils.* If you’re planning to add the juice when you start simmering the sauce, frozen or reconstituted juice will taste pretty much the same as fresh juice when you’re all done, which is to say, like hardly anything at all.
If you’re trying to stretch your pennies, I suppose you could use the non-fresh juice as the bulk of the ingredient at the beginning, and then add a bit of fresh right at the end. But since most of the flavor will be removed during cooking, what would be the point?
*If you’re sauteeing diced onions, you’re wasting money by using an expensive extra-virgin olive oil; regular olive oil will do. Use the expensive EVOO for dressings and final touches.
Missed this on preview. Example: tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes (the generic beefsteak and roma type) are bred and grown for their appearance, the swollen red luscious look, and not for their flavor. They’re designed to look good so they will sell well in the grocery store; how they actually taste is secondary. (The same can be said for Red Delicious apples, incidentally.) Canned tomatoes, on the other hand, are grown more for flavor than appearance, and are superior for the majority of your tomatoey needs, except of course during that rare and wonderful time once per year when you can get locally grown tomatoes, especially juicy and flavorful heirlooms, at your area farmer’s market. Sort of weird and counterintuitive, I’ll admit, but it’s true.
Well, it depends on the recipe, but I’m willing to bet that just about anyone could tell the difference in a side-by-side tasting. There’s a pretty big difference.
I consistently get rave reviews on my food, and often on recipes that everyone makes. “Oh you make the best sugar cookies” or “Hmm this spinach dip is divine!” or “Your deviled eggs are the best I’ve had.” I’d say about 90% of the time I don’t use any different recipes than anyone else does. But I do use the best and freshest ingredients I can find, whether that be high-fat real butter or homemade mayonnaise (a breeze to whip up if you know how) or fresh rather than frozen spinach. Small things make a noticeable difference than anyone, not just “foodies”, can taste.
Maybe, maybe not. A decent wine, for example, will result in a better sauce much of the time. Some ingredients, like olive oil, will lose some of its luster when heated, but that isn’t necessarily true for all of them.
Also, fresh lemon juice plays much better in baking than does the bottled stuff. Otherwise, I don’t use a ton of acidity at the beginning of a “cooked” dish.
I second that. Great example.
I can tell the difference when served a Margarita that’s been made with concentrate. 
I misread that as “the only times I’ve had to throw away an unopened lemon it was because it was moving” – that’s a lot of spoilage right there! :eek:
(Incidentally, anyone know a good way to slice fresh limes into tiny bits? That’s the only reason I use RealLime in my recipes instead of chunks of whole lime, caus I end up with mostly lime juice anyway when I try to cut them up )
Not sure I understand the question. You are using RealLime as a substitute for lime pulp, not lime juice?
What recipe are you making that calls for pieces of limes?
Well, I’d like to have chunks of lime, with the lime juice and the pulp still intact, but failing to achieve that, have had to settle for RealLime juice, since the difference between fresh lime juice and RealLime wasn’t big enough for me to justify the time and money difference in using just the juice from the fresh lime.
Typically, lime pulp adds very little to a recipe, which is why lime juice is usually called far. Setting that aside for a moment, I am a little confused as to why fake lime juice is preferable to fresh. If you are frustrated by cutting up a lime, try just squeezing the juice out of it.
Wait, I see what you’re saying, though I’m not sure what the price difference is between a lime and a bottle of RealLime. I know there is almost no time difference.