What exactly is lemon oil? The package instructions say to use it in place of lemon zest.
Lemon oil is not lemon-infused oil, but rather highly aromatic oil that is pressed from lemon rinds; as such, it is used in recipes to replace lemon zest (and not juice). Lemon oil is much more potent than lemon extract, which is lemon oil diluted in alcohol.
We bought a few bottles of lemon oil and tried it out alongside fresh zest in the test kitchen’s Lemon Pound Cake (the recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of zest). Boyajian, the leading brand of lemon oil here in Massachusetts, doesn’t offer a conversion factor for zest to oil. After much trial and error, we found that ½ teaspoon of lemon oil provided the same lemony kick as 2 tablespoons of zest. We prepared our Roast Lemon Chicken using that same conversion; although a few tasters detected “something different” about the chicken made with oil, all found it acceptable.
At first glance, lemon oil seems pricey ($16.75 for a 5-ounce bottle). But at our conversion level of ½ teaspoon of oil for every 2 tablespoons of zest, each lemon’s worth of oil costs around 14 cents—a pretty good deal when you consider that lemons often sell for around a dollar. (Admittedly, with the bottle, you don’t get the juice.) A bottle of lemon oil should last a year in the refrigerator.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Lemon oil is extremely potent; we found that ¼ teaspoon of lemon oil is equivalent to 1 tablespoon of lemon zest in recipes. We’ll still be calling for fresh zest in our recipes, but lemon oil is an acceptable substitute.
