Pink Lemonade

The pink in this lemonade comes from real fruit, cooked into a syrup and stirred into lemon juice and cold water. Use whatever red fruit you have, including rhubarb or strawberries from the market in spring.

Serves 10 · 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 pound fresh or frozen raspberries, halved strawberries, pitted cherries or chopped rhubarb
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1⅔ cups water
• ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 7 cups cold filtered water
• 1 cup fresh lemon juice (from 5 to 6 lemons), plus more to taste
• Ice, for serving

Instructions

1. Put the fruit, sugar and 1⅔ cups water in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring now and then, until the syrup thickens slightly, 5 to 15 minutes (frozen fruit takes longer). Turn the heat down if it starts bubbling up toward the rim.
2. Stir in the salt.
3. Pour the hot syrup through a fine-mesh sieve into a large measuring cup, pressing on the fruit to get out all the juice. Discard the solids.
4. You should have about 1¾ cups of syrup. If you have more, return it to the pan and boil it down a little further.
5. In a pitcher, stir the syrup into the 7 cups cold filtered water, then add the lemon juice. Taste and add more lemon if you like it tarter.
6. Serve over ice.

Tips

• The syrup keeps, covered in the refrigerator, for up to a week. Spoon it into single glasses of lemonade or into cocktails as you go.
• A finished pitcher of lemonade also keeps in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Adapted from a recipe by Eric Kim in NYT Cooking.