Watermelon sorbet (no ice cream maker required)

I have been thinking about making watermelon sorbet for a long time. Then a girl at work was talking about how she wants to get an ice cream maker. And I read this article in the New York Times about egg-free ice cream (which I wish I had read before the vanilla bean incident last week) and this article in the Washington Post about making ice cream in a plastic bag. Clearly the universe was telling me to make sorbet.

I couldn’t find a recipe for just plain watermelon sorbet, and a lot of them had things like chocolate “seeds” or other items I didn’t want. I finally found one on epicurious.com from my beloved Gourmet magazine (R.I.P.), but it had something called “wine basil gelée” with it, and called for lemon juice.

Well, I don’t like wine and I don’t even know what gelée is. Plus, I thought lime would be yummier than lemon with watermelon. So I tweaked the recipe a bit.

This piece of watermelon came from the Amish market and was enormous. You will need a 4-pound piece (weighed with the rind), so you can either use part of a large watermelon or one of those small ones.

The watermelon chunks wouldn’t all fit in my blender at once, so I put as much as possible in there, blended it a bit and then added more. You will probably have to do the same, unless you have a ginormous blender.

And I figured some of you don’t have ice cream makers, so I wanted to try making this in a bag so I could tell you how it turned out.

The bag method was surprisingly easy, but it would be much better to do it outside. I definitely got some freezing cold salt water on my kitchen floor and ended up having to double-bag the ice part because the first bag started shredding.

I ended up doing the rest of the mixture in my ice cream maker the next day. Both ways, it was unbelievably good. Toby said it is “almost like crack,” which is somewhat alarming for a few reasons, but also probably true. So today when you drive by that roadside vendor selling watermelons, stop and buy one. And get yourself some Ziploc bags. Just don’t expect to have any of this left over for anyone else.

Watermelon sorbet (Adapted from Gourmet magazine)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon lime zest*
5 cups coarsely chopped seedless or seeded watermelon (from a 4-lb piece)
Juice of one lime (about 2 tablespoons)

If making in a bag:
4 cups crushed ice
2 cups salt (cheap table salt is fine)

Bring sugar, water, and zest to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Reduce heat and simmer, without stirring, for two minutes. (This makes a simple syrup, which can also be used in cocktails like mint juleps, FYI) Allow to cool.

Put watermelon in a blender, add syrup and lime juice and blend until smooth. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl, stirring and pressing to get all the liquid through. Discard any remaining solids.

For freezing: Place ice and salt in a large air-tight plastic bag (I used a Ziploc gallon freezer bag). Add a small amount of water — a tablespoon or so at a time — to help ice melt a little. Pour some** of the watermelon mixture in a smaller air-tight plastic bag and nestle into the ice-salt mixture. Shake or massage for five to 10 minutes, until sorbet is frozen***. Quickly rinse salt water off of outside of smaller bag and serve. Add a little more ice (like half a cup) to the salt water to freeze the remaining watermelon mixture.

Or freeze in an ice cream maker. Store leftovers (yeah right!) in an air-tight container.

*Zest is the colored part of the skin of a citrus fruit. If you don’t have a grater or something else to zest the lime, it’s OK if you skip this. You may want to add a little extra lime juice, though.

**Don’t completely fill the smaller bag; allow some room for expansion. I recommend filling it about 3/4 of the way.

***This could get a little messy, so make sure you use heavy-duty plastic bags and do the shaking outside or in a kitchen or laundry room where you can mop up any salt water that may be flung about.