Stop Trying to Squeeze Out All the Lime Juice. Excessive Pressure Leads to Bitterness
When squeezing citrus fruits, you’re probably trying to squeeze out as much juice as possible so you don’t waste money or fruit. However, there is a culinary reason you can only squeeze almost completely: to avoid unnecessary bitterness.
Andrew Zimmern , chef and host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel, shared this tip in a demo I attended at the New York Food and Wine Festival this weekend: Don’t squeeze out all the lime, because the last bite is the best. Bitter.
Papin , a Stack Exchange member and retired food science physicist and botanist behind Flavor Alchemy , agrees:
Yes, citrus fruits can be squeezed too hard.
The bitterness you sometimes experience in citrus fruits comes from limonin, a compound that most people can find in concentrations of only a few parts per million. In many citrus fruits, limonin is formed when the acid vesicles of the juice interact with LARL, a tasteless substance in the tissues of the fruit ( Hasegawa, 1991 ). In squeezed lime juice, the LARL reaction to limonin takes several hours, so if it’s very fresh it won’t be as bitter.
Excessive squeezing, like using a pestle, will expose more tissue (and therefore LARL), leading to more bitterness later on.
So squeeze out, but don’t worry if you don’t pour out all the juice. As a result, your meal or cocktail may be better or more balanced.