Lemon zest, salt and pepper is all you need to make From-scratch Lemon Pepper Seasoning! Great for seasoning fish, chicken, steak or used in salad dressing or marinade.

There are a ton of things that I eventually want to make; like my own ketchup from the pantry, or sandwich bread and jam. Today it is lemon-pepper. I needed some for a recipe so I set out to make it myself.

How hard could it be? Have you ever made your own lemon pepper seasoning? Am I the only freak who would? Don’t answer that. Actually my mom is a only like me… she makes her own poultry seasoning… so there, I’m not alone.

Lemon pepper seasoning is like the all-purpose seasoning to fish and chicken, like Lawry’s is to beef and eggs and like chocolate is to pretzels.

Know-what-I-mean?

Well it is painfully simple to make and in this dish you won’t find any artificial modified-anything! Only good lemony-peppery-flavory. Sorry-y.

To Make Kitchen-made Lemon Pepper Seasoning Set out:

lemon zest
coarse salt
freshly (coarse) ground black pepper

Start with a lot of lemons, pepper and salt! Now I know four are pictured but I added the zest of another lemon.
Now if you want more lemon than pepper reduce the amount of pepper or increase the lemon zest.

So I started out with 4 to see how much I would need…

Set out a whole lotta lemon zest. So I added another lemon to the zest pile.

Scrape.

And add it to a bowl.

Add in the pepper.

I used a mixture of half black and half the “peppercorn medley” because not only does it have pink, green and white peppercorns, but it has coriander and allspice in it as well. I simply tossed them in my spice grinder and gave’em a speedy pulse.

Give it a good stir, mashing the lemon zest into the pepper.

There is no “exact amount” of lemon zest. I probably should have measured it all out for you. But it depends on the size of the lemons you are using. So I say between 5 and 7 lemons.

Pile it in the center of a parchment lined baking sheet.

Spread it out and bake at the lowest setting until the zest is completely dried. Mine took an hour it may take longer depending on how much set you’re using.

I checked on it every now and again and give it a toss. Spread it back out and back into the oven it goes.

It smells pretty good right about now.

Once completely dried. Add to a spice grinder.

Place the lid on tight and blitz away.

Until it resembles lemon pepper or fine sand.

You can either add the salt now or not. Only keep in mind if you like to control your salt, you may want to skip this step.

Mix until combined. And there you have it! Kitchen-made lemon-pepper seasoning!