If you are the parent of an indoor citrus tree you know about anticipation. After many months of waiting, and of watching buds, blossoms, and embryonic green Fruit forming (often to drop off!), you have a perfectly ripe lemon (or yuzu or calamondin…), ready to pick. You did it! But what can you possibly make that will do justice to this precious crop? Whether you are using a single fruit, or a flock, here are 7 ideas on what to do with them—techniques for infusions, syrups, candies, a salted ferment, marmalade, citrus powder, and dried fruit.

Images by Marie Viljoen (unless otherwise noted).

My own five citrus trees spend about seven months inside our Brooklyn apartment, facing sunny south. Harvesting their fruit feels like a party.

Infusion

An easy way to preserve especially fragrant citrus is to drop slices into gin (or vodka or white rum). Strain the liquor after a week, and bottle. Incorporate the leftover fruit into marmalade (with some fresh fruit for necessary pectin).

Syrup

Yuja-cha (Korean yuzu tea) is made by pouring boiling water over yuja-cheong: yuzu preserved in an uncooked, slightly fermented syrup. It is a deeply versatile ingredient in its own right. The technique can be applied to any citrus fruit.

To make the yuja-cheong: Slice a ripe, clean yuzu thinly. Pry out the numerous fat seeds. Layer the slices in a clean jar with sugar. Close the jar loosely and leave on the counter for about five days, stirring daily. Syrup will form quite quickly. If, once all the sugar has melted, the top slices are exposed, top up with more sugar until they remain covered. Transfer to the fridge.

The liquid syrup is a precious ingredient in mocktails and cocktails, pan sauces, desserts, and of course, the therapeutic tea. Just add boiling water to a couple of slices with a spoonful of syrup, and sip.

In New York’s East Village photographer Juliana Sohn applied the syrup-technique to the best of her three-fruit Meyer lemon crop. The tree lives indoors full-time. She tends it lovingly, tying the branches to a support so the heavy lemons don’t break them. “The largest, prettiest lemon was so precious I sat on what I should do with it,” she wrote, in a message. “Lemonade? Didn’t want it to go into a salad dressing or some side role…” So she sliced it and packed it into a jar with sucanat (a whole sugar similar to muscovado), which she plans to deploy in tea and in a marinade for sticky chicken wings.