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Easy recipe for Hindu fermented lemonade, a lightly cultured traditional beverage to add probiotics and enzymes to any meal.
For those of you who are wanting to take the leap and start adding a daily probiotic element to your whole foods diet, this recipe for fermented lemonade, also called Hindu lemonade, is an all-time favorite of traditional foodies.
It is as easy as it is delicious, pleasing both child and parent alike.
This type of healthy beverage is also the answer to those sugar-laden, juice boxes that most kids have packed in their school lunches every day. Worse, that sugar is frequently a juice blend with added GMO high fructose corn syrup.
Even a 100% juice box is still just sugar in the final analysis. Once you pasteurize fresh juice, the nutrition is long gone and all that remains is obesity-promoting fructose and a sugar spike/crash for the child. Not the best choice for school lunch by any means!
How to Make Hindu Lemonade
Packing this homemade fermented lemonade, on the other hand, is a nice treat that will delight, nourish, and strengthen your childโs immune system.
Fresh whole milk a great choice for a school lunch (when the kids were young, I usually packed a thermos of cold, fresh milk โฆ sometimes I packed sipping bone broth too), but when you have run out temporarily or just want to pack a juice treat, this is a great choice.
Note that using freshly squeezed lemon juice produces the most reliable results. Using pasteurized store juice does work, but you run the risk of mold.
Why is this? Store lemon juice is pasteurized, which eliminates the natural probiotics and enzymes that faciliate the fermentation to โtakeโ properly.
Fermented Lemonade Recipe
Easy recipe for fermented lemonade that will no doubt be one of your familyโs favorites as it is rich in flavor and probiotics.
Ingredients
- 6-8 medium lemons or 1- 1.5 cups of lemon juice (preferably fresh squeezed)
- 1/2 cup sucanat
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg preferably organic
- 2 quarts filtered water
- 1/2 cup liquid whey
- vegetable starter optional. Use if you prefer dairy free starter.
Instructions
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Mix all ingredients together in a 1 gallon glass jug.ย
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Cover and leave on the counter for 2 days and then transfer to the refrigerator.ย
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The lemonade flavor improves over time, but is drinkable immediately after the 2 day fermentation period.
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If it is too tart compared with the overly sweet lemonades from the store, mix 1 or 2 drops plain liquid stevia to each glass until your family adjusts to the mildly sweet/sour flavor.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
Limes or a combination of lemons and limes may be substituted for the lemons. The juice must be freshly squeezed.
Reference
More Information
Switchel: Natureโs Healthy Gatorade
How to Make Orangina (Fermented Orange Juice)
How to Make Ginger Ale
Brew Your Own Healthy and Traditional Root Beer
which is best…?… water kefir or lacto fermented juices ??
Thank you !
This sounds delicious!
Can using the contents of a spore probiotic capsule replace the whey for fermentation?
There are certain bacterial strains that are required for fermentation. Depending on your probiotic brand, it may or may not contain those strains. I need to to write an article about that!
Thank you for this wonderful idea and recipe. If I donโt have whey, can I use the โwaterโ from my homemade yogurt? Thanks!
Yes you can! That water off the top of yogurt is actually liquid whey ๐
Hey there! Do you add anything to your curds to make them taste any better? I have not found anything and unfortunstely, I don’t really like them. :-/
Thank you! It is the end of day two and it looks kind of merky. The organic sugar was brown so Iโm sure that has something to do with it. It tastes kind of like slightly tart apple cider. The merkyness makes me nervous. Can I mess it up that bad? What is the worst that can happen? Iโm afraid to drink it for fear I did something wrong.
If it’s “bad” then the smell will tell you so. If it is slightly tart, that sounds perfect!
Thanks for this cool idea! I could not find sucanat in my local stores so I made it with organic cane sugar. I used 1/2 cup as the recipe calls. Is that ok?
Should be ok, but the flavor won’t be as rich.
Can you use Stevia instead of Sucanat?
No … because the sucanat serves as food for the probiotics as they ferment the lemonade.
I can’t use whey. Is their any other way to make ferments without whey?
Use a vegetable starter culture. http://amzn.to/2wutZJt
OR, use Use 1-3 tablespoons of finely ground sea salt per quart of water to prepare brine for fermenting vegetables.
How is the taste like? Is it hard to get a kid to enjoy it? I guess it depends on how you flavor it, I just worry with picky kids. Thank you for sharing!
No telling with a picky child. You probably would have to work on it for awhile before it was accepted.
What can be used instead of whey?