July 2009: Homemade sorbet and pickled watermelon rinds

At some point, when I had all these watermelons laying around, I decided to try a homemade sorbet. With the silent 't' on the end, it sounds like it should be complicated to make, but it's really basic. Here's a rough sense of what went into it.

First, a couple ripe, but slightly pale watermelons (pale enough for me to want to do something with them other than eating them fresh):

I think it just took me this one watermelon to get all the fruit in a bowl pictured below, and of that, I only devoted a small portion to the sorbet. (The rest was used for shrub, a project I'll describe in my next post.)

I added fresh mint from the backyard and blended.

In a separate pot, I brought grenadine, lime juice, sugar, more of my mint, and some local honey to a boil. (The recipe called for corn syrup and lemon juice, but b/c I had neither, I used Round Rock honey and lime juice).

And I added the mix with the blended watermelon and put it in the fridge b/c I didn't have time to mess with the ice cream machine then.

I pulled out the ice cream machine later that week -- one of several wedding gifts that falls into the category of "used once a year, but when we do use it, it's really great."

And presto, the final product, which I stuck in the freezer overnight before trying (according to instructions):

I tried a few different styles for presentation, starting with plain and then each subsequent gaining some new topping . . . cream, fresh mint, my mom's homemade limoncello -- they were all great additions. In the future, I think it'd be good to add limoncello to the base before mixing/freezing.
When make sorbet and other things with lots of watermelon that you've painstakingly nurtured in your backyard, you hardly want to waste so much of the fruit by throwing away the rinds. So I decided to "pickle" some of my rinds and can them in jars. (If you're not familiar, pickled watermelon rinds are a classic Southern "delicacy.") The recipe I used didn't really taste like pickles, though, which was a disappointment -- it was much too sweet . . . actually, they would make perfect substitutes for apples in a pie b/c the texture, color and flavor (mostly due to the sugar and spices, I think) all reminded me a lot of apple pie filling. In the future, I'd prefer something much more like dill pickles.

One of the first steps was soaking them in a brine.

Then I boiled it, adding sugar, cider vinegar, spices that remind me of winter (not on purpose, but b/c those are the spices the recipe called for . . . another shortcoming of the recipe).

Finally, I drained them and jarred them . . .

I'm obviously not trying to recreate a workable recipe for you in these pictures/captions; there are plenty of similar recipes online. Rather, this should give you a basic idea of how simple the process is and what the end product was like.

Finally, my mother complains about all the pictures of vegetables and none of her granddaughter . . . so here's a gratuitous photo of my sous-chef on the evening I made all this.