Fruit

Lemons and limes

Four to five minutes cut side down, and the point is what it does to the juice rather than to the fruit.

What it does in fast-moving hot air

The cut face of a lemon or lime is a grid of juice-filled vesicles behind a thin membrane. Direct heat caramelises the sugars in that membrane and in the pith while the juice behind it warms without evaporating much, which softens the acidity and adds a faint bitterness from the browned pith. Four to five minutes is enough for colour on the face; longer dries the vesicles and the fruit stops yielding juice, which defeats the exercise.

Why the cut matters

Grilled citrus is a technique rather than a dish, and it has a published figure, so it belongs here. Nobody eats a grilled lemon; they squeeze it over something else, and it tastes different for having been cooked.

Cooking pages

Grilled lemons and limes — Four to five minutes cut side down, for the juice rather than the fruit.

There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.