Tangerine Sorbet

So easy! Tangerine sorbet made from fresh tangerine juice, lemon juice, and sugar.

Winter is the season for tangerines and other mandarin oranges.

There’s something wonderfully comforting about enjoying a big bowl of ripe, juicy, sweet mandarins in the middle of dismal, dreary winter.

Walking around the neighborhood, oranges stand out like light bulbs against their bushy green trees among most of the other trees, now skeletal from the cold.

If you love the flavor of tangerines as much as I do, mandarins are available by the box load at most markets, and Odwalla makes an excellent fresh tangerine juice that you can only buy now, during winter.

Either makes a refreshing, light sorbet!

Homemade ice creams and sorbets tend to be icy, because they don’t have the stabilizers in them that commercial products have. So, it’s usually best to eat them the day they are made, unless you add alcohol or corn syrup to them to help keep them smooth for a day or two more (they will eventually get icy).

In this tangerine sorbet recipe, I couldn’t think of any alcohol to add that wouldn’t detract from the tangerine flavor, so I added a tablespoon of corn syrup (could add more), which helped to keep it from being too icy the next day.

Still, it was better the first day, and more snow-like the second.

Tangerine Sorbet Recipe

  • Prep time: 15 minutes
  • Sorbet churning time: 30 minutes
  • Yield: Makes a little less than one quart

Ingredients

  • 3 cups fresh tangerine juice (or juice from mandarin oranges)
  • 3 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp corn syrup (optional)

Method

1 Pour tangerine juice through a fine mesh sieve into a large bowl. Use a rubber spatula to press as much juice as you can through the sieve, discard remaining pulp.

2 Add lemon juice, sugar, and (optional) corn syrup to the bowl. Stir with a spoon until the sugar has completely dissolved.

3 Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Serve immediately, or chill for a few hours. Best eaten the day it’s made.


Links:

How to make ice cream without a machine – tips by David Lebovitz.