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Making intense sorbets

986 views 11 replies 6 participants last post by  nicko 
#1 ·
I'm just a home chef/foodie and not very experience at that. So bear with me, I have a feeling I'm asking a dumb question haha.

I want to start making some of my favorite sorbets with my ice cream maker.  I plan to make: lemon, lime, raspberry, mango and watermelon. Not all at once haha.

Of course, I've googled and found various recipes for all of these. Most of the recipes call for a little vodka to prevent ice crystals, and researching on this site I've learned about invert sugar and sorbet stabilizer. I've got some of each en route from amazon now. (by the way, would you use all of them?)

Here's where my question starts to get dumb. I was wondering how to make my sorbet really intense. Not really knowing anything, the obvious solution seemed to be to concentrate the fruit I am using. So I've been researching that and found two techniques for concentrating my juices- using a freezing technique and of course boiling/reducing.

So I set out tonight on my first experiment- with raspberries. I thought I would be clever and puree the raspberries in a blender, filter them then use the freezing/thawing/dripping technique to remove a lot of the water. But- the raspberry puree I have discovered is very thick. I don't think I'll be able to reduce it this way.

So my questions:

1) Does it make sense to concentrate/reduce my sorbet fruit? Or is that just a bad idea? Or ...

2) Will carefully reducing (boiling/simmering) the fruit ruin the sorbet?

3) What would concentrated fruit do to the recipe? (change the sugar amount?)

Thanks in advance for entertaining my absurdity haha.
 
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#3 ·
I usually do a bit of both. For example, a blueberry sorbet, I will puree and strain the berries. Probably boil down about a third of this to an intense syrup, then add it back to the "fresh" juice. This you can add to the simple syrup and spin. You can play with this all you like, but the result are some layers of flavour, a mix of intense and fresh.

Also, sorbets love contrast. A hit of acid, not so much that you taste it, will perk up everything else.

Al
 
#4 ·
I don't think I would cook the fruit. I like cooked fruit in baked things but cooking fruit definitely changes the flavor from fresh to, well, cooked, and as Chris says, sorbet is all about freshness.

I've never really had a problem with sorbets not being intense enough. Just taste your mixture as you make it and leave it a bit fruitier than you think you want it before you freeze it, as freezing will "blunt" the flavor somewhat. Yes, too, on a bit of acid--lemon or lime juice (fabulous with mangoes) or--with berries, balsamic vinegar--especially good with strawberries and blueberries.
 
#6 · (Edited)
Here's a simple recipe for making around 300 ml of raspberry sorbet;

275 gram raspberries

100 ml water

120 grams sugar

Purée the raspberries and push through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. The net weight should be around 200 grams. Add 100 ml water to the fruit pulp until you get 300 ml in total.

Pour the pulp in a pan and add sugar. Bring to a boil and let boil just a few minutes. Leave to cool. Put in an icecream maker. If you don't have one, put the preparation in a wide plastic container and put it in the freezer. Remove it every half hour and work it through with a fork to break the ice crystals.

Edit; Forgot to mention a squeeze of lemon juice, sorry.
 
#7 ·
Just me, but I prefer to stress the importance of a good simple syrup for a creamier sorbet. Putting all the ingredients together will most likely give you more of a Granita flavor. acid is important and I would not hesitate to drop some salt.
 
#9 ·
In case anyone wants an update on my adventure- I made two sorbets last night- Key Lime and Raspberry.

For the key lime I followed a recipe I found that uses invert sugar and sorbet stabilizer, and the base is now 'maturing'- I will churn it tonight. But the base tastes amazing- very tart and intense but not overpowering.

So for the raspberry I wanted to do a simple recipe I could bang together immediately (well, I did let the base chill first). I found a recipe that said basically "puree the raspberries and granulated sugar in the blender then churn in the ice cream maker". This recipe called for 3/4 cup granulated sugar with 36oz raspberry puree and 1/2 cup water and said that it was a very tart recipe. So I added 1/4 cup invert sugar because I have it and figured it would help with the smoothness of the puree. Turns out it made it a little too sweet- so I added a bit more raspberry puree that I had left. Still a tad too sweet but only a tad. I cooled it to 38 degrees in the fridge, then churned it. It took 35 minutes churn (probably because all the sugar), but the result is a flavorful, intense and very airy, very creamy sorbet. There was about 1 cup too much for my quart size container, but rest assured I disposed of that extra cup properly haha. mmmmm. I put the rest in the freezer, then broke it out for an afternoon snack today. PERFECT! A little sweet yes, but not too much. Perfect consistency and very intense just like I was hoping. Oh to make the raspberry puree I used a juice strainer (hand crank type) rather than a blender or juicer to avoid getting a milky puree from the seeds. It came out an intense dark purple.

Coming next: watermelon and mango. =)
 
#11 · (Edited)
EricS, congratulations on your success!!!

Something else to keep in mind. Salt open your cells and transport flavor more rapidly to your brain. This is also true for sugar.

So if you don't need to enhance the fruit taste you can cut down on the salt.

I have no idea what part of my old brain that came from, could be totally incorrect. But I've always thought that.

panini
 
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