A natural preservative, Citric Acid blends easily without creating a gritty mouth feel and is often used as a flavoring additive in foods, soft drinks and as a replacement for salt in some salt free seasoning blends. It is also known as lemon salt or sour salt.

Where It’s From

Citric acid is found naturally and comes from the fermentation of crude fruit sugars. Its name stems from the citrus fruit family which includes grapefruits, lemons, limes, oranges, pineapples and tangerines. While it is found in all of these fruits, lemons and limes have the highest concentrations of the acid.

Citric Acid has been recognized as safe by all major national and international food regulatory agencies and has been approved by the FDA for use in food.

Our citric acid is produced from glucose syrup derived from cassava. This acid is dry, odorless, and crystalline, with a strongly acidic flavor. It can be used as a pH-control agent in food, but it can also be used in creating personal care items. Commercially, citric acid is used in all of these ways, as well as in various health and technical applications. It is a naturally occurring, weak, organic acid. 

Flavor Profile

It has a tart taste that is slightly less complex than the flavor of a lemon.

How to Use

There are numerous uses for citric acid, and it can often be found commercially in alcoholic beverages, breads, cheeses and ice cream. Its tart flavor may be most familiar when used as the powdery coating for sour candies.

Citric acid has the same effect as lemons in preventing fresh fruit from browning and can be used when making homemade canned fruits or jams in place of lemon juice. If you are on a low sodium diet, citric acid can be used as a substitute for salt in sour breads such as rye and sourdough. Use an equal amount of citric acid as you would salt for the same flavor with none of the sodium.

Adds sourness to sweets, where adding a coating of citric acid provides the recognizable puckering sourness taste.

When used in homemade ice cream, it plays the part of emulsifier by keeping away fat globules. When added during the making of cheese, it aids in curdling the milk.

It can be substituted literally anywhere lemon juice is used.