Superior Sorbet

In my frozen dessert world, at this very moment, sorbets are king. Keep your frozen yogurts, your ice cream, your cream-heavy cassatas and your iced parfaits – I am sticking to fruit and sugar. Pure but not so simple.

Emperor Nero owned slaves, lived close to mountains with snow on it, ruled over valleys with fruit trees and entertained a lot. So it is not surprising that he often sent his slaves into the mountains to collect ice. Once home, these very same slaves (or different ones, I am not sure) were instructed to cut and juice the fruits from the valley and pour it over the ice. Once done, this mixture of ice and juice were given to dinner party guests as dessert. I believe this might have been one of the earliest forms of sorbetto or sorbet. If the story is true, of course.

From personal experience, I can tell you that you do not need slaves or live close to snow-covered mountains or rule over fruit-filled valleys to make sorbet. All these might help a little, but they are definitely not indispensable. It also does not matter if you do not entertain or receive guests on the odd occasion, you can eat all the sorbet you make yourself.

Although you can make a sorbet out of just about anything, fruit is most commonly used. The fruit could be fresh or frozen, but since you live in Namibia, I suspect you will have to resort to the latter more often than you would have if your ruled over fruit-filled valleys. Let me share a little secret with you: I freeze almost all my fresh fruits. The freezing process causes the fruit cells to burst, releasing more juice, and since juice is what you’re after, you’re in good shape if you buy your fruits already frozen.

Sorbet is nothing other than flavour (fruits or whatever else you choose to use), water (which could be juice), sugar (because without it your sorbet will freeze rock hard) and air (which you introduce when you churn the mixture). But beware, it is not as simple as it seems.

Some fruits are mostly water with almost no fibre or pectin to give it body. Just squeeze a slice of watermelon. It is almost pure water. Should you freeze it as is, it comes out rock hard. Which is great if you are making ice cubes for cocktails, but not so great for sorbet.

Here are a few ways to increase the viscosity of your base juice:

• Add more sugar. Sugar lowers the freezing point of water, so it is essential. But this works but only up to a point. Too much sugar and the sorbet becomes overly sweet and the flavour is compromised. If you have a refractometer, make sure your mixture has the right density (between 20 and 30 brix) or else use a raw egg. To test the density of your base mix, place a fresh raw egg (still inside its shell, please) in the base mix. The egg will float and the top will protrude from the mixture if your mix has the correct density. If it sinks or stays at the bottom, you need to add more sugar.

• Use a different type of sweetener. Believe it or not, not all sweeteners are equally sweet. Fructose is a great sweetener for fruit sorbets especially when used in combination with liquid sweeteners like inverted sugar, corn syrup or glucose.

• Use a stabiliser. Pectin is a stabiliser that occurs naturally in some fruits (berries, stone fruit and grapes, for example), so by adding the skin, juice or pulp of a fruit high in pectin to your base juice (very much like making a jam), you increase the overall viscosity of the base mix. If you want to keep your flavours pure, add pectin (from a pack) or one of the modern hydrocolloids such as gellan gum, xanthan gum or guar gum. They prevent the formation of large ice crystals and improve viscosity. Most are made from plants or seaweed, so they are natural products. A more traditional stabiliser is whipped egg whites.

• How much sugar to add? Most sorbet recipes call for a simple sugar syrup of near equal amounts of water and sugar (50/50). This is then added to the fruit juice or pulp. I do not use a syrup all that much as I do not like to dilute the flavour of the fruit. If you use only fruit pulp, start by adding about 20% of the weight of the fruit pulp in sugar, i.e. about 200 grams of sugar per one kilogramme of pulp. Depending on the sweetness of the fruit, you may add a little more. Taste to find the right balance. Add a little water only when the fruit puree is too thick.

• I do not like to boil or heat the fruit, the pulp or the juice. Heat alters the flavour of fruits and I like fresh tasting sorbets. They should not taste like jam.

• Add booze. Seriously, if your sorbet is in danger of freezing into solid ice, alcohol helps to lower the freezing point. Unless it is part of the flavour profile you’re after (sparking wine or champagne), use mostly neutral tasting ones with high enough alcohol levels (vodka). Turning a boozy sorbet into a delicious fruity cocktail is easy. Just let it melt and add more of the same booze! Not the kind of sorbet I’d recommended for children, though.

• Balance overly sweet sorbets with a little tartness. Lime and lemon juice are recommended in recipes, but I prefer malic acid. I find it much easier to control as the tartness in malic acid is predictable (the first 1/8 of teaspoon of malic acid has the same degree of tartness as the last one). Fruits vary in tartness and the amount of juice they carry. Thus, the juice of a half a lemon may not be carry the same amount of tartness as what is called for, either because the fruit is not tart enough or because it does not have enough juice. Or the current batch is too tart and has a lot of juice. But this is just me wanting to be precise, you do not have to do everything I say.

I hope that after reading this, more people would make sorbets at home. You don’t need much in terms of equipment (I recommend a blender instead of a juicer because you’d want to retain a certain amount of pulp) and you are on your way. I strain some types of fruits, such as berries, because they contain a lot of seeds that I don’t appreciate. But that is about it. I do not strain fibrous fruits such as pineapples and mangoes cause they add value to my sorbet.

If you have an ice cream machine, you are sorted. If not, you could freeze your base mix and then put it through a strong blender. Or you could follow one of the many “how-to-make-ice-cream-or-sorbet-without-a-machine” guidelines available on the internet.

In my view, sorbets are one of only a few kitchen-time investments that renders extraordinary large returns. You’d be foolish to not try it.

• 700 grams fresh pineapple, cut into chunks

• 120 grams fructose

• 10 grams fresh marigold leaves

• 1/2 to 1 red chilli, seeds removed then finely sliced

• 1/8 teaspoon guar gum (optional)

• Mix the guar gum into the fructose. Add all the ingredients to a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Taste for balance.

• The mixture should not be overly sweet or too sour. If too sweet, add more pineapple or some lemon juice. If too sour, add more fructose. At this point you could put the mixture in the refrigerator for a few hours to allow the flavours to develop a little more.

• Cover the top with cling film and push it down onto the surface of the sorbet.

• This prevents icicles from forming on the surface. Cover with a lid and freeze for a few hours.

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