Strawberry lemonade

• 1 cup infused sugar

  Set your infusion strength above and this splits into infused and plain sugar to hit whatever dose you want.

• 1 cupfresh lemon juice — about 6 lemons
• 1 lbstrawberries — hulled and halved
• 4 cupscold water — divided
• fine salt — a pinch
• ice — for serving
• lemon wheels — optional

Method

1. 01

   Use sugar here, not an oil or a butter. A cold glass of lemon water has no fat, no protein and no starch in it to hold an oil droplet, so an infused fat separates within a minute, climbs to the surface and coats the pitcher wall and the first glass poured.

2. 02

   Blend the strawberries with 1 cup of the cold water until smooth, then push the purée through a fine sieve, pressing the solids with the back of a ladle. You want about 1½ cups of juice and none of the seeds.

   5 min

3. 03

   Put the lemon juice and the sugar in a lidded jar and shake, or stir them together in a bowl, until the liquid runs clear and there is no grit on the bottom. Give it a full three to four minutes.

   4 min

4. 04

   Tip the jar and look at the base before you go on. Sugar still sitting there is dose still sitting there, and it will end up in whichever glass gets the last pour.

5. 05

   Stir the lemon syrup, the strawberry juice, the remaining 3 cups of water and the salt together in a pitcher. The salt is not for saltiness — a small pinch pulls the sourness and the strawberry flavor forward.

6. 06

   Chill for at least an hour. Cold lemonade tastes less sweet than warm, so taste it after it is cold rather than before.

   60 min

7. 07

   Stir before every pour and fill six glasses to about 8 oz each. The strawberry solids settle and take some color and flavor down with them, but the sugar stays in solution, which is the point of making it this way.

8. 08

   A pitcher in the refrigerator looks exactly like ordinary lemonade and pours exactly like it, and lemonade is the easiest thing in the house to top up without a second thought. Label the pitcher, keep it on a shelf children cannot reach, and tell anyone else in the kitchen what it is.