Lemon Ice

Ingredients

• 4 cup water
• 2 cup sugar
• 0.75 cup lemon juice

Method

Dissolve 400g sugar into 1 litre of water at a rolling boil, stirring for two to three minutes until the crystals vanish completely. This isn't a long simmer — the point is dissolution, not reduction. Once clear, remove from the heat immediately and pour in 180ml fresh lemon juice. The acid will sting your nose; that's the volatile oils doing their job, and it's what defines lemon ice against mere frozen sweetness.

Let the syrups|syrup cool to room temperature — roughly 20°C — before straining through a fine sieve lined with muslin. This removes any pulp and membrane fragments that would coarsen the texture when frozen. Don't skip it. A grainy ice is worse than no ice.

The cooled syrup must now be freezing|frozen without mechanical churn. Pour into a shallow metal tray and place in the coldest part of your freezer. After 45 minutes, the edges will begin to crystallise into a slush. Using a fork, scrape these crystals from the sides and break them into the centre, stirring well. Repeat this every 30 minutes for the next three hours. This manual scraping aerates the mixture and prevents large ice crystals from forming — the same principle that makes the difference between granita and a block of ice. You're breaking the formation of citrus|citrus juice into large needle-like structures that would split the texture on the tongue.

The finished ice should be fine-grained and slightly slushy, not solid. It will never set hard like a sorbet made with an ice cream machine because there's no gum or egg white to hold the structure. This is intentional. Serve directly from the freezer in a small glass, eating with a spoon or fork. If the ice has frozen solid, leave it at room temperature for five minutes to soften slightly before serving — the texture should be just below the point of melting.