1,545 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

How to zest a fruit?

You will have no doubt noticed that many recipes call for the zest of citrus fruit. The zest is that outer layer of the skin which adds so much flavour to a dish.

There are many different ways to peel off the zest and various tools are available. Here is a summary of the “dos and don'ts” of zesting.

47 K 3.8/5 (59 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Zest Ziste Zester Grater Fruit Citrus Skin Peel

Last modified on: November 5^th 2013

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

How to zest a fruit?

Good fruits

First and foremost: zesting a fruit means removing the upper, outer part of the rind, which also happens to be the part that receives most of the chemical treatment inflicted on the fruit.

zester

So be careful: you absolutely must wash the fruit thoroughly before zesting it, but the best thing to do is to use organic fruit, which is guaranteed to be untreated.

The right part of the fruit

The part of the peel that can be zested is generally very thin, 1 millimetre or less, so it's very important to remove only the coloured part of the peel - the zest - and not the white part underneath, which is not zest but a major source of bitterness, to be avoided at all costs!

zestes

In this photo, you can see the zest on the right and the white part of the peel on the left.

The right tools

There are a number of more or less effective tools for zesting:

zester zester

1) The peeler or a sharp knife: with it, you delicately "peel" the fruit and obtain small strips of zest (colored, remember: no white) which you then have to cut into strips, then into tiny pieces. It's not very fast, nor very efficient, but it works.

zester zester

2) The zester: this is a strangely-shaped knife that zests by making tiny filaments. The structure of the zester means that you can't remove any white parts, which is interesting. The only drawback is that the zest obtained is a little "crushed" and "exuded", so it's not great.

zester zester

3) The zester grater: This is a bit like a cheese grater, very fine, on which you rub the fruit while rotating it (be careful, it's the fruit that moves, not the grater).
It's by far the most efficient of all tools, and you can find out more about it on this page.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,5655

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,2995

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,195

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20253,4235

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20258,0043

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The baker always gild twice

I've already told you about gilding, the beaten whole egg that is spread with a brush on anything that needs to brown in the oven: puff pastry, pastries, etc. and that professionals use a lot, I'm going to come back to this to clarify a bit how to do it, and give you a professional tip.
June 9^th 201935 K4.2

The secret of cooking until "done"

This is a real chef's skill: being able to look at a fish fillet cooking and say, "Stop – that's enough, it's cooked". I always admire this ability to see at a glance if something is done. It is what sets the professionals apart from us mere amateurs. And it's true that how fish is cooked is...
November 26^th 201220 K4.4

The return of the "Norman hole"

You maybe know the "trou normand", this old gastronomic custom typically French which consists in taking a (small) glass of calvados, generally between the last course and the dessert? It's something that seems a bit anachronistic nowadays, having a glass of an alcohol of more than 60° in the...
December 18^th 202115 K4.8

Should I believe my oven?

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201133 K4.6

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
June 16^th 202157 K4.8