⚡ Great enthusiasm 🍋 To scrape peel 🧂 To add flavor

to zest

1 4.1

To scrape the outer colored skin from a lemon or orange to add flavor

verb
/zɛst/

: rallar

She decided to zest a lime to give the salsa a refreshing kick.
lemon, zested
orange, zested
lime, zested

Examples

Or zest, because if you zest onto a cutting board, you lose all the lovely citrus oils that fly all over the place.

Blog text (8)
Now we're going to zest the whole lemon in zesting the lemon.
Go ahead and just zest it right in here and you want to get the orange part of the orange peel because you don't want it to get too bitter.
To make the recipe even better, you should zest a fresh lemon and mix it in the batter.
Before adding it to the cake, remember to zest the orange for extra flavor.

Compounds

lemon zest

7 3.0

A thin bright outer layer of a lemon peel that people grate to add flavor

orange zest

4 2.8

Thin outer skin of an orange grated to add flavor to food

zest fest

7.6

A food festival celebrating oranges, lemons, and local food

How Citrusy

to zest

1 4.1

to grate

46 2.3

to pare

3 4.8

to peel

126 1.0

Surface Forms

zest infinitive

zested past

zested past participle

zesting present participle

zests third person singular

Etymology

To zest a fruit, meaning to scrape off the colored outer skin, comes directly from the word zeste for that 'peel', since that thin skin holds a powerful flavor cooks use to brighten dishes.