Mango Sorbet

The other evening we were having dinner at Solea restaurant in Waltham. Across the street is one of Waltham’s Indian grocery stores, New Apna Bazar. Right now seems to be mango season as they had at least four, maybe five different types of mangoes out front. I had also heard that the Indian grocery stores in Waltham were the best places to buy ripe mangoes, so we picked up a case. After using a couple for Mango Salsa to go with last week’s flounder, I decided that what we really needed to do was make mango sorbet.

In The Curious Cook, Harold McGee investigates the chemistry behind various cooking techniques. If you’ve ever wondered how melting butter into a reduction turns into a cream sauce, and not just melted butter, this is a great book. What has this got to do with Sorbet? Well, Harold investigated the relationship between fruit purees, juices, sugar and freezing. It turns out that getting a perfectly smooth, not grainy sorbet requires the right amount of sugar, but not too much or it won’t freeze. Luckily, one of the fruits he experimented with (of about 30 different fruits) was mangoes. So we had the perfect mango sorbet recipe. Here goes:

Mango Sorbet
3.5 cups mango puree (about 4 mangoes)
18 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
Put the mixture into your ice cream maker and freeze according to the maker’s directions. It will still be a bit soft when you finish. Scoop into a container and freeze until firm.