Pink Lemonade
Updated June 25, 2024
Linda Xiao for The New York Times Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Heather Greene.
- Total Time
- 20 minutes
- Prep Time
- 5 minutes
- Cook Time
- 15 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
Advertisement
Ingredients
1 pound fresh or frozen raspberries, halved strawberries, stemmed and pitted cherries or chopped rhubarb
⅔ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste (from 5 to 6 lemons)
Ice, for serving
Nutritional analysis per serving (10 servings)
21 grams carbs; 83 calories; 3 grams fiber; 62 milligrams sodium; 1 gram protein; 17 grams sugar
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Powered by
Preparation
- Step 1
In a large saucepan, combine the fruit, sugar and 1⅔ cups water. Cook over medium-high, stirring occasionally and reducing the heat if bubbles start to rise out of the pan, until the syrup thickens a bit, at least 5 minutes and up to 15 minutes for frozen fruit. Stir in the salt.
- Step 2
Carefully strain the hot syrup through a fine-mesh sieve into a large liquid measuring cup, pressing on the fruit to extract juices then discarding the fruit. You should have about 1¾ cups syrup; if you have more, return to the pan and boil longer. (The syrup can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 1 week.)
- Step 3
To make a pitcher of lemonade, stir the syrup into 7 cups of cold filtered water. Add the lemon juice, then stir to combine. Taste, adding more lemon juice as desired. (The lemonade can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 1 week.) Serve over ice.
Private Notes
Comments
At what point do you add the Vodka?
It doesn't make sense to me to take some delicious refreshing raspberries or other fruit and cook the vitamins and the life out of them. Why not put the raspberries in a blender with a little water, blend and strain out the seeds? Add this to your lemonade. You can add sugar, or sugar syrup made by heating sugar with a little water. I'm going to make some pink lemonade today by adding the syrup from a bottle of maraschino cherries to my fresh squeezed lemon juice, sugar (or Stevia) and water.
I make a similar lemonade spritzer: freeze lemon juice into large ice cubes. Add one to a medium size glass, add 1 tbsp fruit syrup (or more to taste), and fill glass with sparkling water. Stir to melt the ice cube. A little ginger grated into the fruit syrup gives a bit of a kick, or even a 1/2 tsp of raspberry vinegar.
Quite tasty! I like to minimize food waste when I can, so I ended up saving the strawberries after filtering and used them in overnight oats. Was tasty and a good use of the strawberries. I'll definitely try this recipe again with different herbs like mint, basil, ginger, etc mixed into the strawberries.
Made this for two strawberry-loving little girls and it was perfectly pink and not too sweet. The adults added some to their palomas, which were too tart. Everyone was happy.
Pretty easy, very pretty colour too! Although more red than pink.