You need lemon zest to make a lemon meringue pie, and so you should use fresh lemons. Personally, I would buy a Marie Callender lemon meringue pie before I would make one with lemon juice in a bottle.

If I were going to make a citrus pie now, I would make a lime pie because I have a lot of limes and only a couple of lemons on my Meyer lemon tree, and they are not ripe yet. In another month or so I should have a good supply of lemons from my Eureka lemon tree, and I think they would be fine for a pie.

Since lemons are a major ingredient in this pie, you should only use the best juice.

Lars

I remember lots of lemon meringue pies growing up and they were ALL made with bottled lemon juice. Fresh lemons were never purchased or used at our house, but there was always one of those little plastic lemon-shaped bottles of lemon juice in the refrigerator. The link below has a recipe, although it's not one I've used so I can't vouch for it.

I use "True Lemon" (crystallized lemon powder), as well as "True Lime". These products are great for home food storage and I've used it for Lemon Meringue Pie any number of times, as well as lemon squares. So if you happen to have some "True Lemon" packets, this is the link to that recipe.

http://truelemon.com/recipes/collection/true-lemon-meringue-pie.html

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Just A Pinch Recipes

I'm with Lars on this one. I have made lemon meringue many times in the past, and without the lemon zest it just doesn't have the same intensely lemony flavor. If you like the taste of commercial lemon meringue pie as Grainlady mentions, you may not care.

Lars - if I had a lime tree I would be making lime pie. I've made it with Persian limes which are easier to juice and zest than the tiny key limes, and I like it as much as true key lime pie. My Meyer only produced 1 lemon this past year, and that went into a citrus and kale salad. I love Shaker lemon pie made with Meyers, it's one of my favorite desserts.

Cheryl

clairdo2,

I see you live in northern Canada and most likely do not grow your own lemons and imagine they are quite expensive to purchase. I can vouch for the product grainlady mentions, "True Lemon". I also keep it in my food storage program and it's quite good. Might want to order some (it's not expensive and they will email you coupons going forward).

You can certainly make a good lemon meringue pie with REALEMON.

I live in Connecticut and DH traps lobsters as a hobby. I understand many in the country have to eat lobster shipped in and stored in a tank in the grocery store. There is a noticeable difference in taste and texture between that product and fresh caught lobster but many still purchase them and say they've had a wonderful special meal. Same with fresh lemons. Not everybody lives in the southern tier of US states. Fresh citrus is also expensive here and considered a real treat. I make preserved lemons once/year both because we love them and as a way to avoid that high cost as much as possible.

Just use the REALEMON in place of "lemon juice" in your pie. It will be delicious!

/tricia

This post was edited by triciae on Fri, Mar 29, 13 at 13:10

Where I grew up there were no fresh lemons available.
Lemon Meringue pie was a rare treat,

I honestly don't remember my Mother ever making one,
But when I reached my early 20's,
I used the bottled lemon juice,
And it was good.
Now I use 'real' lemons,
Because they are available.
But I've never added any of the zest.
I really don't care for zest in many things,
So I think to use it or not is a personal choice.
Not a 'have to' by any means!

Rusty

I had no idea lemons were expensive in other parts of the country, but they could be slightly out of season. I think I have paid as much as 65 cents for a lemon, which was painful for me to do, but still reasonably affordable, I thought. To get 1/2 cup of lemon juice, I would need two or three lemons.

Here is a recipe using lemonade concentrate, which I think has a better flavor than bottled lemon juice. I haven't made this recipe, but it looks like it would be good.

Lars

I can usually find real lemons to make LMP, although that wasn't often the case in my Mom's and Grandmom's days. I recall reading that during the Great Depression, resourceful prairie bakers made a reasonable facsimile using rhubarb juice. I tried it a couple of years ago, and it was very good, although different than lemon.

My mother and I always used freshly squeezed lemon juice for pies; however, never, never, never lemon zest. None of my family likes the taste of lemon zest. And the lemon pies taste wonderfully delicious without the zest.

However, I am glad to see the recipes for using bottled lemon juice and concentrated lemonade. Thanks for those links.

This post was edited by walnutcreek on Fri, Mar 29, 13 at 18:04

Last year I did a bit of research on food rationing and in one paper - March 1943 - a bottle of lemon juice was 27-cents and 9 rationing points - which was a good bit of money and points. We always used bottled lemon juice on fish patties because the canned salmon and mackerel weren't always the best stuff.

I honestly don't ever remember having a real lemon in the house growing up in the 50's and 60's. Oranges and grapefruit were big treats each winter.

Lemon Bars were always my "emergency" dessert because there was always bottled lemon juice, eggs, flour, sugar and butter in the house. My mother made lemon meringue pie as her "emergency" dessert.

-Grainlady

I thought you needed the zest! Interesting that you don't.

I always preferred lime meringue pies to lemon. :) And extra sour.