Lemon sorbet: a syrup, the juice of six lemons and a fork every half hour
Three ingredients and one ratio you have to know: the sugar must be a quarter of the weight of the whole mix. Less and the sorbet freezes into a block of ice, more and it never sets at all. The syrup is boiled with the zest, the juice goes in only once it is cold, and after that all it takes is a fork every thirty minutes. No dairy, no eggs, no machine.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Syrup 10 min
- Syrup cooling 60 min
- Combining 10 min
- Freezing 240 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneBoil a syrup with the zest
Scrub two lemons and take off wide strips of the yellow zest with a peeler, without the white pith. Bring the water, sugar and zest to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and boil 3 minutes. Take off the heat.
Ingredients: 400 ml water · 200 g sugar · 6 pcs lemons · 1 pinch salt
TipThe essential oils sit in the yellow layer of the peel and only dissolve in hot syrup. The white pith alone is bitter, which is why this is a job for a peeler, not a grater.
Wide strips of zest, three minutes at a boilCool the syrup completely
Cool the syrup with its zest 60 minutes to room temperature, then ideally give it half an hour in the fridge. Strain and discard the zest.
TipLemon juice poured into hot syrup loses its fresh, floral aroma and leaves only sourness behind. A warm mix also freezes more slowly in the freezer, and slower means coarser crystals.
Squeeze the juice
Squeeze 200 ml of juice from the lemons and strain it to catch the pips and coarser fibres. Lemons at room temperature, rolled under your palm on the counter, give noticeably more juice than cold ones.
Two hundred millilitres, strainedCombine and check the ratio
Stir the cold syrup with the juice and the pinch of salt. You have about 800 g of mix, of which 200 g is sugar — exactly a quarter. Taste: it should be sharply sour and clearly sweet at the same time, because freezing noticeably mutes the flavour.
Ingredients: 400 ml water · 200 g sugar · 6 pcs lemons · 1 pinch salt
TipSugar in a sorbet doesn't only sweeten, it lowers the freezing point. At 20 % the mix sets into a block no scoop will touch; at 35 % it stays a slush that never firms up. Keep to 25–30 % and don't cut the sugar 'to make it healthier' — instead of a lighter dessert you will get a block of ice.
Eight hundred grams of mix, two hundred of sugarFreeze, stirring every half hour
Pour into a metal tub and freeze. Every 30 minutes break up the frozen edges with a fork and stir them vigorously into the middle — 7–8 times in all, over 4 hours. With a machine: churn the cold mix 25 minutes and firm it up in a tub for an hour.
TipEach stir shatters the crystals before they can grow. A sorbet left for four hours untouched is a lemon-flavoured block of ice; the same mix stirred eight times is as smooth as a gelateria's.
A fork every thirty minutes, eight timesServe
Leave the tub out 5 minutes and scoop with a scoop dipped in hot water, into chilled glasses. In a closed container it keeps 2 weeks. Serve on its own, with a mint leaf, or as a palate cleanser between courses.
Five minutes out, chilled glasses
Before you start
With egg white: smoother, but pasteurised only
One pasteurised egg white (about 30 g) from a carton, whisked to a foam and folded in after the second stir, gives a lighter, creamier sorbet. Do not use raw white from a shell egg: it is an untreated raw product and carries a salmonella risk, particularly for children, pregnant women, older people and anyone with a weakened immune system.
Orange, lime, grapefruit
The same ratio works for any citrus, but sweeter juices need less sugar: for orange go down to 150 g and add the juice of one lemon for acidity.
It won't set
Usually too much sugar, or a syrup boiled too long so that much of its water evaporated. Add 100 ml of cold water, stir and keep freezing, forking as before: the water dilutes the sugar and pushes the ratio back towards 25 %. Check the freezer too — it should be at −18°C.
