Advertisement

Gelato U’s strawberry sorbetto recipe scaled down for your kitchen

The strawberry sorbetto I made in a one-day crash course at Gelato U. The ingredients: strawberries, water, sugar and lemon juice.
(S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times)
Share

Thursday’s emails included a nice surprise: recipes for gelato scaled down to home ice cream machine size. These came from Luciano Ferrero, the instructor who taught the one-day crash course in gelato I participated in last week.

At SoCalGas Co.’s test kitchen in Downey, we used commercial gelato machines made by Italian manufacturer Carpigiani for gelato shops.

My assignment that day was strawberry sorbetto, made only with strawberries, water, sugar and lemon juice — but that recipe made 1.5 kilograms, or more than 3 pounds, of mix to go into a quite large machine.

Advertisement

My home machine is a Simac Gelataio Magnum Plus that I bought almost 20 years ago. That machine has been a champ, churning out countless batches of gelato, ice cream and sorbet or sorbetto over the years. It’s not quiet, so it lives outside in a utility closet.

But this recipe works with any home ice cream or gelato machine. And the genius is that you don’t need cream or milk or eggs to make sorbetto: just fruit and water (and sugar, of course).

Ferrero’s recipe for a home machine follows. Maybe I’ll try it out this weekend.

STRAWBERRY SORBETTO

Very important: Note that all ingredients are weighed, not measured, for more accuracy. His original recipe is in grams: I’ve converted it to ounces in parentheses. This recipe was not tested in the Test Kitchen.

250 g (8.8 oz.) strawberries

200 g (7 oz.) sugar

200 g water (7 oz.)

Juice of 1 lemon

Add strawberries to the sugar, water and lemon juice, then blend until smooth. Place in your ice cream or gelato machine and freeze until firm.

And here’s the recipe for lemon sorbetto. Again, all ingredients are weighed rather than measured.

Advertisement

LEMON SORBETTO

Zest of one lemon

200 g (7 oz.) lemon juice

280 g (10 oz.) sugar

350 g (12.3 oz) water

Add lemon zest to the water and let it steep for approximately 20 minutes. Set aside. Squeeze the lemons to obtain the juice, then add sugar, stirring constantly. Pour the water through a sieve into the lemon juice/sugar mixture. Stir. Place mixture in in your ice cream or gelato machine and freeze until firm.

Follow @sirenevirbila for more on food and wine.

Advertisement