Fill a bowl with enough water to submerge your cleaned artichokes in. Squeeze the juice from two lemon halves into the water. Place the squeezed lemon halves into the water also.

Grasp an artichoke on a cutting board with a thick towel. This will protect your hands from the spines at the ends of the artichoke leaves.

Place a serrated knife firmly against the artichoke about one third of the way from the top.

With a sawing motion, cut the leaves all the way through and discard the top.

Turn the artichoke and trim the fibrous stem down to about 1 inch.

Turn the artichoke with the cut side away from you. With the serrated knife, start your cut at an angle that will follow the natural curve of the artichoke.

With a sawing motion, cut only the outer leaves.

Turn the artichoke a quarter turn and continue cutting away the outer leaves.

When you have gone around the entire artichoke, you may go back around and trim away any excess leaves.

You should end up with a clean looking artichoke that has only the light colored inner leaves exposed.

Turn the artichoke onto the cut end.

Again with the serrated knife, follow the curve from the stem down to where the leaves start.

Trim all the way around until all of the outter dark green has been removed. It is very fibrous and inedible.

At this point, you can go back and trim away any excess with a paring knife.

Your artichoke is now clean down to the choke.

Place the artichoke into the acidulated water. This will prevent browning and is necessary for holding artichokes while others are being cleaned.