Ginger and lime sherbet

Sharp, fresh and only lightly dairy. The ginger warms, the lime cuts — an ideal palate cleanser or the end of a heavy meal.

A sherbet is a sorbet with a little milk in it — enough to soften the texture, not enough to bury the fruit. With ginger that is exactly what is wanted: a pure ginger sorbet is an assault, while a few per cent of fat and milk protein round the heat off and let the citrus come through. The lime goes in last and into a cold mix — acid added to a warm one would curdle the milk proteins.

Type: Sherbet · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Easy

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 395 g water
  • 190 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 50 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 30 g glucose syrup (DE 40, 80 % solids)
  • 80 g fresh ginger (peeled) (peeled and finely grated)
  • 200 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 50 g cooking cream 12 %
  • 60 g lime juice (fresh) (from 2–3 limes)

Making the mix

  1. Peel and finely grate the ginger. Put it in a pan with the water, granulated sugar, dextrose and glucose syrup.
  2. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, cover and infuse for another 20 minutes — that is when most of the pungency is released.
  3. Strain the syrup through a fine sieve, pressing the ginger well, and discard the pulp.
  4. Chill the syrup below 5 °C in iced water. It must be genuinely cold before the milk goes in.
  5. Stir the milk and cream into the cold syrup.
  6. Add the lime juice a little at a time, stirring constantly. Acid poured in all at once would curdle the milk proteins into flecks.
  7. Cover and rest in the fridge for 4 hours. If a fine curd appears on the surface, blend the mix briefly before churning.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch the ice cream maker on 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Give the aged mix a quick blitz with a stick blender and pour it into the bowl, no higher than the fill line. Churn for 25–35 minutes, until it thickens and clings to the paddle.
  3. Transfer to a chilled tub, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

Total time: 8 h 2 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the bowl, frozen for at least 24 hours, out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the well-chilled, freshly blended mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the mix thickens to a soft cream. There is no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled tub, cover with cling film and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

A freezer bowl only partly freezes the mix, so the ice cream takes longer to harden and tends to be slightly less smooth than from a compressor machine. A thoroughly chilled, properly aged mix helps.

Total time: 8 h 27 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a CREAMi tub up to the MAX line, put the lid on and freeze it level for 24 hours.
  2. Put the tub in the machine and run the Sorbet program.
  3. If the result is crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and run Re-spin.

Programme: Sorbet

Total time: 29 h 7 min

Stages

Preparation
15 min
Cooking
12 min
Cooling
35 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
30 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h 30 min
Total time
8 h 2 min

Plan: what to do and when

The whole recipe takes 8 h 2 min, of which 27 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.

The making itself fits into a single day — start at least 8 h 2 min before serving.

  • Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 15 min
  • Cook the mix — 12 min
  • Cool the mix down — 35 min
  • Let the mix age in the fridge — 4 h
  • Churn in the machine — 30 min
  • Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h 30 min

Serving and storage

Serve in small portions between courses, after fish or after an Asian meal. It is also excellent with slices of melon, or topped up with cold sparkling water as a refreshing drink. Let it stand for 5–10 minutes and run a spoon across the surface before scooping — sorbets harden faster than dairy ice creams.

In a sealed tub it keeps for 1–2 weeks, but it is best within three days — after that the crystals coarsen and the flavour fades.

Tips

  • Ginger heat builds with infusion time, not with boiling. For a gentler sherbet, cut the infusion to 10 minutes; for a sharper one, give it half an hour.
  • Young ginger with thin skin is juicier and less fibrous. An old, wrinkled piece gives more heat but also a woody note.
  • For a dairy-free version, replace the milk and cream with 250 g of water and add 15 g of sugar — the recipe becomes a sharp ginger sorbet.

Why it works

Sherbet has a narrow window: 1–3 % fat, 1–6 % milk solids non-fat. Two hundred grams of milk and fifty of 12 % cooking cream give exactly 1.3 % fat and 2 % MSNF — enough to change the texture, too little to make the ice read as dairy. Sugars come to 24.8 % and the PAC to 29.4 (range 26–40). The ginger itself adds almost nothing: it is 79 % water and its carbohydrate is mostly starch, which neither sweetens nor depresses the freezing point. Its job is purely flavour — the heat comes from gingerols, which cooking partly converts into milder zingerone, which is why a long off-the-heat infusion beats a long boil.

Related recipes

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  • Orange sherbet

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  • Wasabi ice cream with white chocolate

    Sweet white chocolate with a short, clean burn in the nose behind it. The boldest recipe in the set — and surprisingly easy to eat.

How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator

Sources