A lemon reamer is a small kitchen utensil used to extract the juice

Juice

Juice is the liquid that is naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue.Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or macerating fruit or vegetable flesh without the application of heat or solvents. For example, orange juice is the liquid extract of the fruit of the orange tree...

 from a lemon

Lemon

The lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...

 or other small citrus fruit.

It consists at one end of a convexly tapered conical

Cone (geometry)

A cone is an n-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a base to a point called the apex or vertex. Formally, it is the solid figure formed by the locus of all straight line segments that join the apex to the base...

 blade

Blade

A blade is that portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with a cutting edge and/or a pointed tip that is designed to cut and/or puncture, stab, slash, chop, slice, thrust, or scrape animate or inanimate surfaces or materials...

, with deep straight troughs running the length of the blade. The very tip of the blade is often a smooth spike. The other end is a cylindrical handle. The blade may be made of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

, plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

, or metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

. The simplest reamers, which many consider the best, are solid pieces of milled and carved soft wood.

To use a reamer, the user first slices a chosen fruit in half with a knife along its equatorial midsection. Grasping the fruit in one hand and the reamer in the other, the user first pierces the exposed flesh

Flesh

In vertebrate animals, flesh is the colloquial for biological tissue which consists of skeletal muscles and fat as opposed to bones, viscera and integuments. Flesh may be used as food, in which case it is called meat....

 of the fruit with the tip of the reamer blade, then grinds out the inside with a twisting wrist motion until nearly all of the juice is extracted. This dislodges the seeds

SEEDS

SEEDS is a voluntary organisation registered under the Societies Act of India....

 and some amount of pith

Pith

Pith, or medulla, is a tissue in the stems of vascular plants. Pith is composed of soft, spongy parenchyma cells, which store and transport nutrients throughout the plant. In eudicots, pith is located in the center of the stem. In monocots, it extends also into flowering stems and roots...

, so the juice must generally be strained before use.

Reamers are prized for their simplicity, durability, safety, high yield, ease of use and cleaning, and low cost relative to other juice extractors.