You Only Need 3 Ingredients For A Perfectly Refreshing Mango Sorbet

Dishes with complex flavors don't necessarily have to be complicated to make, and elegance often relies on simplicity. It's hard to find a more elegant dessert than a bowl of mango sorbet: gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, and as voluptuous as ice cream, but with a transcendent, tropical sweetness. To make a perfectly refreshing mango sorbet, you'll only need three ingredients: fresh mangoes, lime juice, and simple syrup. 

Mangoes aren't called the "king of fruits" for nothing. In addition to bringing a comparatively large amount of fruit sugars to the table (always preferable to the processed kind) as well as a bunch of vitamins and nutrients — including a whopping amount of vitamin C — mangoes have enough fat (more than a half gram per cup) to make them ideal for a frozen, dairy-free application like sorbet because of their inherent lusciousness. In other words, you want this stuff in your life.

Since frozen treats are universally loved, it must come as some relief that mango sorbet is so easy to make. But why is it so sublime? The answer lies in the complex, balancing interaction between the sweetness of the mango (and sugar) and the sourness of the lime juice — which also adds a zesty zing. If you skip the lime juice in this sorbet, you'll end up with, well, sweetened frozen mango pulp — completely lacking in complexity and nuance.

The most widely available mango in the US is a variety called Tommy Atkins, the large, reddish-green fruit you'll likely find in your local grocery store's produce aisle. Look for ones that are mostly red or orange, a little soft, and slightly sweet-smelling — those will be the ripest, and thus the sweetest. You can also head straight to the freezer section and use frozen mango pieces to make your sorbet.

When it comes to the tools you'll need to make this sorbet, look for a knife, a blender, a sieve, an ice cream churn (optional), and a freezer. The process is simplicity itself: peel and chop the pulp of about three mangoes and blend until smooth, adding at least a cup of simple syrup and the juice of one lime. (If you want to make things even easier on yourself, skip the step of making a simple syrup with granulated sugar, adding instead some much finer caster sugar — or even maple syrup — to the blender). When you have a smooth consistency, you can either strain out the remaining pulp or skip this step and head straight to the freezer.

The trick to a perfect sorbet is that it's not super icy. This can be easily accomplished in an ice cream churn, but that's not absolutely vital: Freezing the sorbet in a sealed containerfor a few hours, blending again, and then refreezing will functionally accomplish the same feat. The golden-orange scoops of mango sorbet will look and taste exquisite with a sprig of either fresh mint or basil leaves. Now, on to these ten other healthy sorbet recipes you need to make...