Watermelon sorbet
Almost all watermelon: light, very watery and sweet without quite being so. The sorbet you drink more than eat.
There is not a drop of water in it: the watermelon is the recipe's liquid. It is the wettest fruit there is, and here that stops being a problem and becomes the base.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·Watermelon split in two: half in the base, the other half frozen and added at 25 °C.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Nearly three quarters is watermelon, with no added water, so it comes out extremely light and very cold. It is a delicately flavoured fruit, so the whole thing lives on aroma and on how cold you serve it.
All about this watermelon sorbet
With watermelon taking up nearly the whole litre, the fruit does everything: it supplies the water, its own sugar and the flavour. That is why there is no added water in the list.
The syrup is held up by 38 DE glucose, sucrose, dextrose and inulin. That fibre is essential: watermelon brings almost no dry extract, and without it the sorbet would be flavoured ice. Even so, it only just reaches the solids of a sorbet, with the sweetness where it should be and the serving temperature a little low.
Splitting it in two halves is the characteristic move: one is blended and heated with the sugars; the other is frozen and goes in at around 25 °C, helping the mix cool fast and arriving without ever having seen heat.
Special mention to Yon Gallardo, of Yon Gallardo Helados Naturales (Irún), who helped us improve this recipe and is always ready to lend a hand.
The ingredients and what each does
The fruit brings the flavour, the colour and much of the water in the mix. Sucrose and dextrose set the sweetness and the hardness at serving temperature. Glucose adds body and barely sweetens. Inulin adds solids with almost no sweetness, the job milk would do in an ice cream. The stabiliser holds the free water and stops crystals forming in the freezer.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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