Great British Baking Show Lemon Squeezer

The Great British Baking Show Lemon Squeezers are KitchenCraft Lemon Squeezers (Amazon - UK). It feels like I see a baker using the squeezer at least once per episode.

Basically these squeezers (every time I say squeezer instead of juicer I question the word) are used to make short work of juicing lemons. In a pinch they can also be used for limes which tend to be a bit smaller. Yes - there is a lime squeezer too, but in my experience the lemon squeezer works fine for both.

The KitchenCraft Lemon Squeezers (Amazon - UK) are made out of casted aluminum and then colored yellow. I'm not sure if the yellow is a paint or enameled or anodized on, and the information is lacking. Basically they are yellow - somehow. For funzies they have green ones (smaller) for limes, and orange ones (larger) for oranges.

The squeezers work the same way that closing your fingers in doors works. If you close your finger in the side with the door handle it hurts. If you close your finger in the hinge you're going to the hospital. Having the fruit right by the hinge allows for very little pressure on the handles to crush all the juice out of the lemons.

The KitchenCraft squeezer is simple, but quality. The aluminum handles are quite robust, and the connection point of the handles to the citrus basin is doubly so. Additionally the hinge is a fairly high gauge metal connection. This lets you crank down on the fruit, get the juice, and not break your squeezer.

The citrus basin has holes in the bottom of it which allow the juice out but not the seeds. This is super nice when trying to make drinks or add lemon juice to a dish but not the seeds. Also pro-tip - that I learned the hard way - the fruit goes in with the flesh of the fruit facing the holes, not the way that the fruit 'fits' into the squeezer. If the fruit is in backwards you're gonna enjoy juice all over your hands. The real question is - how old was I when I learned this?

And - oh yea - it is dishwasher safe and comes with a 12 month warranty.

Instead of looking into KitchenCraft again - which we've been over time and time again, it feels like "do you need one of these" is a better question to investigate.

The short answer in my opinion, is 'yes,' you want a lemon squeezer.

Why? Well if you ever make dishes with lemon juice in them you want a squeezer. If you make cocktails, you want a squeezer. You just cut the fruit in half, put it cut side towards the holes and squeeze. I'd say it gets 90% of the juice out of the fruit.

The other option is to cut the fruit in half and try to squeeze it with your hand. That gets like 60% of the juice out or so. Or you can cut the fruit, then score it, then squeeze it by hand and voila ... still not as much as the squeezer. And bonus - now your hand is covered in the zest's oil, you're slippery, and smell like lemons. Remember to wash your hands before you touch your eyes or your child's face.

Or just get a squeezer! Keep your hands clean, and juice through those lemons at hyper speed!

If you're in the UK (oh hi there!) you're in luck - again! KitchenCraft stockists should have the lemon squeezers in stock! You can pick one up in person and have the joy of carrying it home!

If you're in the US you're going to need to order a lemon squeezer. Luckily you can pick one up off Amazon for roughly $25, which in my opinion is quite steep. The same goes for Amazon UK, however, here they go for 8 pounds, much more reasonable.

If you search for lemon squeezer on Amazon you're going to come up with quite a collection of them. Zulay makes one that clocks in with 4.7 stars and nearly 9000 reviews and costs about $9. This is a much more reasonable price in my opinion.

Zulay also makes one that has a basin for lemons and then a smaller one for limes (UK Amazon). Is it necessary? No, but if you find it fun, there it is. It also comes in 6 fun colors. If I was picking one of these up, it would be for the fun colors, not so much the utilitarian "limes go in here, lemons in there" functionality. However, people seem to like it. It also has 4.7 stars, but a whopping 42 thousand reviews, and costs $15.