Do you need to add lemon juice when baking with apples? - Baking Bites (2024)

FAQs

What does lemon juice do to apples? ›

The longer the enzyme is exposed, the browner each slice will become. Lemon juice contains citric acid, which is a natural anti-oxidant. Therefore, when you apply lemon juice to apple slices, it helps to prevent the oxidation process.

To balance flavors: Lemon juice can play a great balancing role in baked goods. We sometimes use it in our cookies to balance out a sweet flavor profile. For instance, our CAVA Apricot Cookies contain a small amount of lemon juice to balance the sweetness of the honey-flavored cookie dough.

Here's the short version: The best way to prevent browning is to soak the cut fruit in a saltwater solution (half a teaspoon of kosher salt per cup of water) for 10 minutes, then drain and store until ready to use. The mild salt flavor can be rinsed off with tap water before serving.

The lemon juice will keep the apples from turning brown. Set your prepared apple crisp aside on the counter until ready to bake. Put the apple crisp in the oven to bake just as you are serving dinner. And by the time dinner is over, this warm syrupy dessert will be ready.

That's because lemon juice has a compound that reacts with oxygen before the oxygen reacts with the apple. It's also acidic, which slows down the browning reaction (and also makes it taste sour!). A light spritz of lemon juice will keep your apples fresh without altering their taste too much.

For most dishes — with the obvious exception of baked goods and lemon-marinated meats and vegetables — a squeeze of lemon should be added right before cooking finishes. Cooking lemon for a long period of time will concentrate the flavor and can make it bitter.

THE RESULTS: Adding lemon juice to milk simply acidifies it, allowing the leavening in the batter to do its job—the same role played by buttermilk.

Lemon juice, Vinegar, clear soda will all prevent food from turning brown quickly. These liquids are acidic, so they will lower the pH of the food surface. Olive oil, will also prevent food from browning, but is less effective than the acids. Water and salt water will also slow the browning of foods.

How do grocery stores keep sliced apples from turning brown? ›

Ever wonder why store-bought apple slices are always so white and crunchy? They're often treated with ascorbic acid, citric acid or sulfites—lemon juice (another acid) works the same way. Give the apples a quick spritz of lemon juice, or dilute a few drops of lemon juice in water and soak the apple slices.

Lemon juice helps keep the apple from turning brown because it is full of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and it has a low (acidic) pH level. Learn more about the pH scale. Ascorbic acid works because oxygen will react with it before it reacts with the polyphenol oxidase enzyme in the fruit.

Apple Treatment Method: Lemon Water

I used 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice per cup of water. I soaked the apple slices in the water for five minutes, then rinsed in a colander under running tap water. The lemon water-dipped slices stayed fresher in the zip-top bag than they did on a plate.

However, lemon juice is not an optional addition. Lemon juice is added to help preserve the apples' natural colour and to assure the acidity of the finished product, since different varieties and harvesting conditions can produce apples of lower acidity.” Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving.

Like the lemon juice-soaked apples, you definitely need to rinse them and pat them dry because they will taste salty otherwise.

“The acidity of lemons helps to prevent the browning of fruits,” says registered dietitian nutritionist Keri Gans, MS, RDN, CDN. “Specifically, it helps to inactivate the enzyme polyphenol oxidase, which is responsible for the browning.”Beyond keeping fruit salad fresh, lemon can also help enhance its flavor.

Because it's full of ascorbic acid (an isolate of Vitamin C) and has a low (acidic) pH level. Ascorbic acid reacts with oxygen before it reacts with polyphenol oxidase. Even when the ascorbic acid is used, the pH of the lemon juice prevents browning.

Although the ascorbic acid in the lemon acts as an antioxidant, and the citric acid in the juice creates a low pH environment to slow down enzyme activity, too much is not always better. At 1 tablespoon, the apples softened too much and turned even more brown compared to the control.