Meyer lemons turn up in the shops for a few weeks each winter and then vanish, and almost every recipe you find for them is lemonade, curd or a syrup with a cup of sugar in it. I wanted the opposite: a juice you can actually drink with breakfast, where the lemon is the point rather than a seasoning. So this one is two Meyer lemons, one apple and two cucumbers, and nothing else.
It is the only citrus juice I make that does not taste like a dessert. Meyer lemons are sweeter and far less sharp than the ordinary lemons sitting in the same bowl, so they can carry a glass on their own, and the cucumber keeps the whole thing light. If you have ever squeezed a true lemon into water and pulled a face, this is the drink you were hoping that would be.
Why these ingredients work
The first thing worth knowing is that a Meyer lemon is not really a lemon. It is Citrus x meyeri, a natural cross that is mostly citron and mandarin with a bit of pomelo further back, which is why it looks like an orange-yellow lemon and tastes floral rather than bracing. Frank Meyer brought it back from China in 1908. The practical consequence for a juicer is that the peel is thin, smooth and only faintly bitter, so you can put the whole fruit through and get the scent that lives in the oil. Do that with a true lemon and the glass turns soapy, which is the single best argument for using the right fruit here.
That lower acidity is the honest reason this works as a drink rather than a dressing. It also makes it gentler on tooth enamel than neat lemon juice, although it is still an acid, so have it with food and rinse your mouth with water afterwards rather than scrubbing your teeth straight away while the enamel is soft.
Now the part most lemon content gets wrong. Lemon juice does not detoxify anything. Your liver and kidneys filter your blood continuously and they do not need waking up, and no drink changes the pH of your blood, which is held in a very narrow range by your lungs and kidneys whatever you eat or drink. What lemon juice does contain is citrate, and citrate genuinely inhibits calcium oxalate crystals from forming in urine. That mechanism is real, and it is the one place where the lemon water story has any substance at all. Keep the scale of it, though. The best trial, Ruggenenti and colleagues in 2021, gave 203 people with recurring calcium oxalate stones either 120 ml of fresh lemon juice a day or no supplement, on top of a standard diet. At two years the lemon group had fewer recurrences, but the result missed statistical significance (hazard ratio 0.62, p=0.089), and the significant finding only turned up in a one-year exploratory analysis. Adherence also fell from 68 per cent to 48 per cent, because people got bored of drinking it. This glass holds about 35 ml of lemon juice, so it is nowhere near the trial dose. Drink it because you like it, and if you form stones, talk to your urologist rather than self-treating.
The cucumber is doing more than adding volume. It is roughly 96 per cent water and very low in sugar, so it stretches the drink without sweetening it, and it brings potassium and a little vitamin K. The apple is there for body and enough natural sweetness that the lemon does not need sugar to be bearable. There is one apple between two glasses, which holds the sugar to about 14 g a glass, roughly half what a straight apple juice of the same size would give you.
Be clear about what this is not. It is not a vitamin C hit. There is about 26 mg a glass, which is under the 40 mg UK reference intake, and just over half of that comes from the lemons. If vitamin C is what you are after, an orange or a red pepper does the job far better. And because the pulp is strained out you get about 1 g of fibre, so eating a cucumber still beats juicing one on that front. What you are getting is a genuinely low sugar citrus drink that tastes of something, which is harder to find than it should be.
FAQ
Can I make this with ordinary lemons?
Yes, but use two and peel them first. A true lemon’s peel is thick and bitter and will make the glass taste like washing up liquid, and the juice is around twice as acidic, so taste as you go and stop before it overwhelms the cucumber.
Do I need to peel the Meyer lemons?
No, and I would not bother. The peel is thin, the pith is minimal and the oil in it is where the floral note comes from, so just wash them and cut out any hard stalk end. The exception is the blender method, where you should peel them, because blades pulverise the pith and that turns the drink bitter and cloudy.
How long does it keep?
About 24 hours in a sealed bottle in the fridge, and it is at its best in the first four. Citrus juice oxidises, and cucumber juice goes flat and slightly sour faster than most, so I would not batch this for the week. If it starts to smell cabbagey, tip it out rather than drinking it.
This one sits in the Detox collection alongside the beetroot, artichoke and wheatgrass juices, where the note is always the same: your liver does the filtering. See the full Detox collection.
Meyer Lemon, Apple and Cucumber Juice
Equipment
- 1 Juicer a masticating juicer handles whole citrus halves best
- 1 Budget cold press juicer the cheaper alternative, just feed the lemon halves slowly
- 1 High-speed blender for the blender method
- 1 Budget blender works fine, blend a little longer
- 1 Nut milk bag or fine-mesh sieve essential for the blender method
- 1 Airtight glass bottles for keeping it overnight
Ingredients
For the juice
- 2 Meyer lemons about 150 g, halved, peel left on
- 1 crisp green apple about 150 g, quartered
- 2 cucumbers about 600 g, roughly chopped
Instructions
Juicer method
- Wash everything. Halve the Meyer lemons and trim any hard stalk end, but leave the peel on. The peel is thin, the pith is minimal and the oil in it is where the floral scent sits.
- Quarter the apple and cut the cucumbers into lengths that fit your feed chute.
- Juice the cucumber first, then the apple, then the lemons last. The cucumber wets the basket so the lemon does not clog a dry mesh, and finishing on the lemon keeps the sharpness bright instead of letting it dull against the pulp.
- Stir once and taste. If it needs more edge, squeeze in a little extra lemon. Serve straight away over ice, or bottle it and keep it in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
Blender method
- Peel the lemons for this method and pull out the pips. Chop the apple and cucumber into rough chunks.
- Blend everything with 100 ml of cold water for 30 to 40 seconds, until there are no solid pieces left.
- Strain through a nut milk bag or a fine sieve, pressing the pulp with the back of a spoon. Do not skip this step. Blended citrus pith and cucumber skin make the drink bitter and cloudy.
- Taste, add a squeeze of the peeled lemon if it wants it, and drink chilled.