Oh citrus what would I do without you in the winter? I never run out of the things to do with you. Sweet treats are definitely high on the priority list. Like sherbet. Fruity, creamy, and delicious. I have made sherbets in the past. I have made Alton Brown’s orange sherbet, which is my go to recipe. I went to it again this weekend. But I change the game a little bit. Instead of the standard juice orange, I opted for something more wild, almost scary even – blood oranges. I knew they would get the sherbet a beautiful color and their flavor would be unique enough to be worth the effort.
Here are my notes from the recipe:
1. In order to get the required 2 cups of blood orange juice I had to squeeze 9 Blood oranges. Since they vary in size and amount of juice plan to use 8-10 blood oranges.
2. One thing I changed from the original recipe was omitting the vanilla extract. I like it in the regular orange sherbet, but I didn’t want anything to get in the way of that unique orange-berry like flavor the blood orange offers. I also left out the lemon juice. Blood oranges have an acidic bite to them, so I didn’t feel the lemon juice was necessary.
3. In the past I just mixed the mixture together in a bowl, but this time I followed his instructions and did in the food processor. This help to assure no big chunk of orange zest throwing off the texture. If you have a food processor or a blender make sure you do the same.
4. I churn my ice cream/sherbet/sorbets in a Cusinart ice cream maker. I have the ICE-20 model
- 7 ounces sugar
- 1½ tablespoons finely grated orange zest
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice, approximately 8-10 Blood Oranges
- 1½ cups very cold whole milk
- Juice enough blood oranges to arrive at 2 cups.
- Weight out 7 ounces of sugar. Add that to your food processor or blender along with salt, zest, the juice and the milk.
- Mix until all the sugar has been dissolved.
- Place the mixture into a pourable vessel and refrigerate for at least an hour, up to overnight.
- Pour into ice cream maker and process until it’s like soft serve ice cream. Allow 2-3 hours in the freezer before consuming for optimal texture.
