Lemon is one of those ingredients everyone uses and nobody really uses up. The juice goes into tea or over fish, the peel usually ends up in the bin. There are at least seven ways to use a lemon completely before throwing it out. Let us go through them.

1. Preserved lemons in brine. Cut the lemons crosswise without slicing all the way through, fill them with salt, drop them into a jar of warm water, and leave them in the dark for four weeks. The result is a North African and Middle Eastern staple - perfect for soups, tagines, marinated vegetables. Not for the bin.

2. Dried peel. Before squeezing the lemon, peel off the zest with a grater or a knife. Dry it at room temperature, in a low oven, or in a dehydrator. The concentrated flavour then goes into teas, cocktails, baked goods. A simple lemon peel in rakija turns local plum brandy into something unexpectedly good.

3. Lemon sugar. Mix 90 grams of sugar with 6 grams of fresh lemon zest. Spread on a tray, let it dry, and you have homemade flavoured sugar for tea, coffee, cookies. On the Balkan table that is the hidden joker - grandmothers were using it without ever calling it that.

4. Lemon ice cubes. Fresh lemon juice frozen in an ice cube tray serves all summer - in water with cumin, in rakija, in homemade lemonade. While others throw out lemons that have started to go off, you have them in the freezer arranged like little treasures.

5. Candied lemon peel. Boil the strips of peel three times to draw out the bitterness, then simmer them in sugar syrup until they turn glossy. Leave them to dry on a rack. The result is both a dessert in its own right and a topping for cakes and ice cream.

6. Paparajotes. The Spanish speciality from Murcia proves that even lemon leaves have a function. Fresh leaves (you do not eat them) are dipped in batter, fried, and dusted with sugar and cinnamon. The lemon flavour seeps in without having to squeeze it out of the juice.

7. Lemon olive oil. Strips of peel in a bottle of olive oil, a few days set aside, and you have homemade salad dressing or fish marinade that costs half what gourmet shops charge. Simple, sneakily efficient.

The lemon is the ingredient that teaches us nothing has to end up as waste. The Balkan tradition does not need this explained - when there is not much, nothing gets thrown away. Now that we have everything, we have forgotten one rule: throwing things out is a luxury we do not even deserve.