Hibiscus Sorbet Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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110 minutes prep time
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60 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
Hibiscus sorbet will make you fall in love with sorbet again. The deep rich red infusion, slightly tea-like, floral with a hint of citrus has elegance. And using a sorbet stabiliser makes the hibiscus sorbet recipe beautifully smooth.
You can serve the sorbet simply as it is. Or for a more formal dessert, plate with meringue shards, perfectly cut cubes of mango, and perhaps piped whipped cream – infused with fresh mint or even lemon verbena.
For the sorbet Serves: 6
- 15g dried hibiscus flowers
- 150g caster sugar
- 3g sorbet stabiliser (approx 2/3 of a teaspoon)
- 50g lime juice
For the meringue shards
- 60g egg whites (2 egg whites)
- 120g caster sugar
- Mango, cut into 5-10mm cubes
For the sorbet
- Heat hibiscus flowers with 250ml cold water in a small pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and leave to infuse until cold. Strain and make up to 400ml with cold water. Discard the hibiscus flowers.
- Mix together the sugar and the sorbet stabiliser. Pour the sugar/stabiliser mixture into the cold hibiscus water, stir and leave to hydrate for 15 minutes.
- Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring constantly with a hand whisk. Remove from the heat, pour in the lime juice. Leave to cool.
- Once cool transfer to an ice cream maker and churn for 45 minutes until frozen.
- Alternatively, pour the mixture into a strong plastic container and put in the freezer. After 1 hour 30 minutes it should have frozen round the edges. Take it out and beat vigorously with a fork, electric whisk or in a food processor until you have a uniformly textured mixture. Return it to the freezer and repeat at least twice more every 1 hour 30 minutes, then freeze for at least another hour.
For the meringue
- Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Slowly add the sugar and continue whisking until glossy.
- Spread on a piece of baking parchment. Cook at 100 C for around 45 mins until crisp.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
