Vegan Papaya, Mango, and Lime Sorbet

Hello, everyone!  As I have stated in the past, I love all kinds of frozen treats, ice creams, sorbets, sherbets, you name it, I love it.  As a matter of fact, when my husband goes to the store to grab some of said tasty treat, he'll ask me what flavor I'd like, and I always say, "My favorite!"  Which, of course, means, if it's frozen, I love it!

Another one of my favorite things to do, is to go to the grocery store, and look at what fruits have been marked down for a quick sale, because it is on the cusp of getting to its "sale-by" date.  I have gotten so many amazing deals on produce doing this, and have made lots of lovely dishes (I have used several fruits in these posts: traditional apple pie, banana bread, mushroom risotto,brown sugar, peach ice cream and my roasted chicken, just to name a few!) by getting fruits and veggies that need to be used quickly!

Now then, my daughter and I love papaya, but short of just cutting it up and serving, I wanted to do something different.  While doing some shopping, I went to the clearance section and found a papaya wrapped up, on sale for $1.  I'm not going to turn that down!  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I was for darn sure going to do something with it!

So, I brought it home, and it sat.  It sat for a couple of days, while I pondered its fate.  I almost just cut it up and served it as is, but I just knew that I could do something better with it!  And I'm glad I had faith in myself.

Here's your grocery list for this one:

   1 large papaya, very ripe

1 mango, very ripe

2/3 C granulated sugar

1/4 C water

1/4 C lime juice

Zest of 1 lime

Pinch of Kosher salt (about 1/4 tsp)

That's it!  Now, when I say very ripe, I mean so ripe you're debating if you should just throw it away.  Please don't throw it away, use it in a sorbet!  These fruits are the perfect ripeness for this!  The more ripe a fruit is, the sweeter it is, so it is perfect to puree up and use in a sorbet.  This mango is so shriveled up, it looks kind of like a lime, but this it is actually a good sized mango with a huge papaya.
I cut the papaya in half, and scooped out the seeds, cut the peel off, then cubed it.  The cubes are then put into a food processor, or a blender. 

I just slide my knife under the skin, and it cuts off very easily; this is also how I take the rind off of the cantaloupe!

This papaya was so huge, it filled up my blender completely, so I just went ahead and pureed it down, just to make room for everything else!  The easiest way I've found to peel a mango, is to just use a vegetable peeler.  You do have to be a little careful with it, though, because it can get a little slippery, but it's pretty easy, and goes quickly.  Once it is peeled, just carefully cut around the large pit/seed, and roughly chop it; into the blender it goes, along with the water, sugar, salt, lime juice and zest!

Zip it through, making sure that everything is really smooth, then cover with plastic wrap (making sure that the plastic wrap is touching the top of the puree), and pop it into the fridge overnight.  The cooler your puree is, the less work your ice cream maker has to do, so that it gets turned into sorbet even faster!

Now then, set up your ice cream machine according to your machines instructions.  Since my papaya was so huge, this made a lot of puree, so I ended up having to scoop some puree out and do it in two batches.  You can see here, that I initially poured all of the puree into the maker, but I noticed that the machine was too full, and that no air was getting mixed into the puree, so this was never going to become sorbet this way.  I ended up scooping about 2 cups of puree out, and set it aside, while the rest churned in the machine.

I ended up removing just enough, so that the puree was going over the beater.  I let this churn for about 15 minutes, until it came to almost a soft serve consistency.  I poured that into a plastic container, then churned the puree I had to remove.  This was just fine, no need to worry!

Again, cover with plastic wrap, and pop into the freezer, for as long as you can stand it!  I usually like to freeze it at least overnight, for the lovely treat to freeze up, but I just could not wait.  I think I ended up waiting about 6 hours, before digging in.  It was still a little soft, but wow was it good!  The lime really shined through after freezing, and it turned out to be very creamy tasting!  I'm absolutely going to do a lot more sorbets in the future, since it is a much healthier option over ice cream.  This will be a really refreshing treat in the upcoming summer, that's for sure!