There has been beautiful weather for the last few days following Canada Day. Way too much rain right through spring and the start of summer. The temperature is still kind of on a moderate side, bouncing between 21-25 °C, but at least it is sunny, and most importantly wide blue skies.
One of my favorite routines at this part of the year is going to local farms and picking fruits that are in season. This past Canada Day was the perfect opportunity to pick the first of the season; strawberries. The family owned farm we visit is only about a 20 minutes drive from our home. The drive through the rolling hills and misty farm land in the early sunny morning is majestic and calming. We come to this place every year and pick fruits for pies, cakes, jams and preserves. It does not get much better than this, with a readily accessible source of fresh, ripe and locally grown produce. The season starts with strawberries and follows in a quick sequence with sweet and sour cherries, raspberries, currants, apricots and ends with blueberries in late August. It is really fun when the car is filled with a fruit fragrance, on the way home. We picked about 8 kg of strawberries in little over half an hour. They were so good and about a third was gone before end of the day. We gulped them fresh and I made a nice sorbet.
The recipe was adapted from Serious Eats with a few small deviations in a process. Primarily, I wanted to improve cooling and the fast forming of ice crystals and that worked nicely. I started my engineering carrier and spent 5 years in industrial ice cream production. That was a valuable, fun and interesting experience.
Sorbets are a sweet, refreshing non dairy frozen dessert; a perfect light treat on a warm summer day. To start with, the trick to a good sorbet, without exception, is good quality fruit. Ripe, fragrant, and fresh fruit is the most important ingredient. Get a good fruit and you are set on your way to make a perfect sorbet.
Making your own, I find, is easy and interesting. No additives, no long list of strange ingredients, and you control what goes in the mix and final result is rather rewarding. A smooth, sweet and refreshing silky texture that melts away in your mouth.
When making frozen desserts like ice cream or sorbet, you have to control the size of the ice crystals. That’s what will provide that smoothness and softness in the mouth that we all like in frozen desserts. Making a sorbet at home, in my case with Cuisinart ICE 21 C ice cream maker, gives great results providing a few simple guidelines are followed.
To start the process, we want to cool down prepared mix or juice as quickly as possible. The next key consideration is a total sugar content. That is the sugar in the fruit itself plus added sugar. If total sugar content is too low, your sorbet will turn into a block of ice, and if it is too high sorbet will be slushy and will not freeze. The ideal sugar content ratio is 20%-30%. To achieve that just add sugar in 4:1 ratio. On 1 kg of fruit add 200 g of sugar or in North-American terms, on four cups of fruit puree add 1 cup of sugar.
The sorbet came out fantastic. Bright red colored, scoops out easily and smooth, and the taste is rich and refreshing.
| Prep Time | 45 minutes |
| Passive Time | 6 hours |
| Servings |
liters
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- 1 kg fresh strawberries washed and hulled
- 200 g granulated sugar
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
Ingredients
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- Wash and hull 1 kg of fresh strawberries. Puree them in a blender or food processor until they are a smooth consistency.
- Add 200 g (1 cup) of sugar and blend until is incorporated, about 30-40 seconds.
- Add 2 tsp lemon juice and 1/2 tsp sea salt and blend to incorporate.
- Strain the puree, and divide the juice into 2 containers. Bigger one with about 3/4 of juice, put in the fridge. The smaller, about 1/4 of juice, fill an ice cube tray and put in the freezer. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
- Put frozen juice cubes into a container with cooled juice, mix until cubes are dissolved. This step will lower the temperature of juice substantially which will result with fast ice crystal formation when churned in an ice cream maker. I was able to reduce temperature of cold juice from 9°C to -1°C.
- Pour the juice into the ice cream maker as per manufacturer instructions and churn until the sorbet is formed, about 20 minutes.
- Take a wooden spoon and transfer sorbet to the container with a lid. Put parchment paper tight to the top of sorbet, cover and transfer to the freezer to firm up, for about 2-3 hours.
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