Best Lemon Juice to Buy When You Can’t Be Bothered to Squeeze

The best lemon juice is fresh squeezed, sure. But lemons don’t just grow on trees—okay, that’s exactly what they do, but we don’t all have lemon trees growing in our yards. And even if we do, we don’t always want to slice and squeeze and find out about a secret paper cut the painful way. That’s where bottled lemon juice concentrate comes in handy. 

Before tasting eight different brands of bottled lemon juice from concentrate and fully stripping off a layer of my esophagus I thought all bottled lemon juice tasted the same. I bet you did too. But we were both wrong. Each lemon juice I tried tasted different from the next. Some were super duper sour, others were bland, others were straight up salty. In the end, only three brands of bottled lemon juice made our ranking—and you may notice that your go-to didn’t make the cut. 

What we look for in the best bottled lemon juice from concentrate: 

• Sour but not too sour. Bottled lemon juice should be sour, obviously. But it shouldn’t be so sour that it tastes like battery acid. 
• Actual lemon flavor. It should go without saying but the best store bought lemon juice should actually taste like fresh lemon juice. Lemon juice is more than just tart, it has a specific, lemony flavor. And we wanted that in our lemon juice from concentrate. 

Best bottled lemon juice from concentrate, ranked

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Best Lemon Juice to Buy in a Big Bottle

Goya Tropical Jugo de Limon

Amazon

If you’re planning on going through a lot of bottled lemon juice, this is the best bottled lemon juice to buy. While it does have a bit of a cleaning fluid kind of smell, the flavor is good and potent. It is tart. It’s so tart that it made me sweat. But real lemons do that too. Is that weird? It’s also a little bit salty—but not like sea water salty, just enough to amp up the flavor. Skip the ReaLemon, buy Goya instead if you’re looking for the best bang for your buck.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best Organic Lemon Juice

Ingrilli Organic Lemon Squeeze

Amazon

I love the fruitiness of this bottled lemon juice. It has a floral, zesty aroma and the flavor is very authentically lemony. The tart juice really fills your mouth and lingers. It’s definitely the priciest bottled lemon juice of the bunch, but it’s worth it if you’re using it as a featured ingredient. Heck, I’d use this in a cocktail. If you live in a place where good lemons are hard to come by, go ahead and splurge on this organic bottled lemon juice.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

Tantillo Sicilian Lemon Juice

Ralphs

This surprisingly cheap little lemon-shaped squeeze bottle is like a perfect hybrid of the Ingrilli and the Goya. It’s tart and fruity and just a hint salty at the same time. It’s vibrant but it’s not overwhelming. It won’t dominate a sauce or dressing. It’s the best everyday bottled lemon juice from concentrate, for sure. And it’s the one I’ll be buying from now on.

Credit: Liv Averett / Ralphs

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

Other bottled lemon juice from concentrate brands we tried: 

Kroger Lemon from Concentrate, Concord Foods Lemon Juice, ReaLeamon, Safaf Lemon Juice, Great Value Lemon