5 Easy, Delicious Sorbet Recipes

(Page 2 of 2)

June/July 2009
By Jerry Traunfeld 
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The most important thing to keep in mind with these frozen desserts is that they must be balanced between sweet and tart. If you make a sorbet with nothing but sugar, water and an herb, it will taste cloying and flat, but add the correct amount of lemon juice and the flavor will be bright and refreshing. Fruit purees each have their own level of sweet and tart, so the proportion of sugar syrup may vary with each particular fruit.

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The other important variable in a sorbet is the texture. Too much sugar will make a sorbet that is too soft; too little sugar will make a sorbet that is too icy. In my restaurant kitchen, we use a refractometer, a handheld instrument that measures brix, the sugar-to-water ratio. In your home kitchen, you’ll need to rely on your taste buds or a recipe. My standard formula is 1 cup of sugar to 3 ¼ cups water and ¼ cup lemon or lime juice. 

You can scoop these sorbets into stemmed glasses to stand alone, or serve them on top of fresh fruit, floating in a chilled soup or even as a garnish for a cocktail. They are ideal endings for summer meals when something light and refreshing is called for, but they also work well as a first course or as part of a weekend brunch. Once you discover how effortless they are to prepare, you’ll find yourself churning up new flavors week after week. 

Jerry Traunfeld, author of The Herbal Kitchen (William Morrow, 2005), received the James Beard Award for Best American Chef of the Northwest in 2000.

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