Scrumptious Sorbet

I love sorbets but have never been brave enough to make one before - my dad had told me I needed to stir it every 30 minutes until it had set and thought egg whites were involved. Well, the former is true, though it's more like every hour at the beginning, and the latter is not true in the case of this recipe. I took the plunge and made raspberry sorbet to end an Italian themed dinner party. It was the perfect finale: light, refreshing and yet full of flavour. The second sorbet I made was a week later as I spotted some blood oranges at the grocers and thought it might be nice to make something with them as they were in season. Finally, my third sorbet was made the other night, once again with blood oranges, when my neighbours here in France (salut!) came over for a thai meal.

It's a terribly easy recipe and can be adapted to lots of different fruits as suits your tastes. I will give the instructions for blood orange or lemon sorbet and for raspberry sorbet but you could change it to strawberry, blackcurrant or pretty much anything. If it's berries don't forget to add a little lemon juice to counteract the sweetness and that berries will take longer to make as they have to be blitzed and then strained, whereas once the citrus fruits have been tested and juiced they can be tipped straight into the sugar syrup.


I don't have an ice cream maker so this method is all by hand and won't be as smooth/scoop so easily but it's still beyond delicious and very easy to make.

Sorbet Recipe

Takes about 12 hours in total (I can vouch for this since I only started making my last sorbet the morning of the meal as we didn't have any sugar)

Place your receptacle for the sorbet in the freezer a few hours in advance (I either use a big tupperware or a clean metal roasting pan)

Ingredients

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
6 lemons/(blood) oranges or 600g defrosted raspberries with a squeeze of lemon juice

Method

Place the water and sugar in a large, heavy based pan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat once the syrup has returned to a see-through state.

For the Lemon/Orange Sorbet: Finely zest 3 of the lemons/oranges and add the zest to the sugar syrup. Using a citrus squeezer, juice all 6 and add the juice to the sugar syrup.

For the Raspberry Sorbet: Allow the raspberries to defrost and then add them to the sugar mix along with  a squeeze of lemon juice before blending them until smooth using a stick blender, then strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve, help it through by pressing the back of a spoon into it, discarding the seeds once you've finished.

With both the sorbet types, you now need to allow it to cool a bit and then transfer it to the tub that's been stored in the freezer.
Set a timer for 30 minutes and when it goes off, use a fork to stir it, making sure that you get into the corners and it all gets mixed up.
Repeat this until it gets to slushy consistency, and then use a stick blender, or tip it into a blender, to make it smooth. Repeat with the next timer.
Hopefully, by now it's almost set and you can just leave it until you want to serve it (no more timers, yay!). The whole stirring process tends to take me about 4 hours.