The Freshman Cook: Culinary Word of the Week-Zester

This week our culinary word is Zester. What is a Zester? It is a tool used to remove the zest from various fruits, such as oranges, limes, and lemons.  What is zest? Zest is the colored part of the outer skin of the fruits. Under the colored part is a white part. While the colored part of the skin is wonderful smelling, and adds a rich and deep flavor to your recipe, the white part is very bitter, and can ruin a recipe. You never want to use the white part when you need to add zest to a recipe.

You use a zester by lightly scraping the fruit across the 

tiny sharp pieces on the stainless part of the zester. 

The result will be very small pieces of the skin, 

ready for your recipe.  Make sure to wash the fruit first, 

and use the zest right away. It does not hold. You can also 

zest with a box cheese grater or a paring knife, 

or a vegetable peeler. If you do use one of these

to create your zest, make sure you chop it down to 

very small size. The finer the zest, the easier it 

incorporates itself into the recipe.

Thanks for joining me today!

Stop by tomorrow and get

the menu & grocery list for next week.

See you then!

Happy 4th of July Weekend!!

Leave a Comment