Pomegranate-thyme sorbet

You may recall that I've arrived at the food blogger bigtime.  I have.  Received.  Free juice.  Yes, the lovely folks at Pomwonderful have seen fit to promote their product with me.  Pomegranate juice.  They sent me a case of the stuff, so take anything I say about it with a grain of salt.  I have been bought.  ;)

But what to do with pomegranate juice that's truly creative or fun?  How about a tasty palate cleanser?  I decided to make a pomegranate-thyme sorbet.  I used this pomegranate sorbet recipe from Cafe Fernando as a starting point for 1 quart of pomegranate-thyme sorbet:

4 cups pomegranate juice
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
large bunch of lemon thyme
1 oz vodka

Combine everything except the vodka, and heat over medium heat until it boils.



Let steep for two hours, then sieve out the chunks of lemon pulp and thyme leaves out of the syrup.  Add 1 oz vodka (vodka keeps the sorbet from freezing too hard, but doesn't add any significant amount of alcohol).  Move to the fridge for at least six hours, preferably overnight.

Run through your ice cream maker.  With the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment, it means turn on your stirrer to the "stir" setting, and then pour in the cold sorbet syrup.  Run for 25 minutes until nicely frozen into a sorbet.

For such a strong-flavoured sorbet, I pour the servings into shot glasses, and freeze them harder in the freezer.  Otherwise, you can just freeze it in a larger container, and scoop it to serve.



Serve with a long handled spoon, so you can scrape out every drop.



Look at that incredible colour!  Yum.  The lemon thyme blends really well with the pomegranate, and this is a bright, fruity mix with just enough acid to keep the flavour interesting.  Perfect to cut through the grease of a bbq dinner, for example, pulled pork (what I served the pomegranate-thyme sorbet after).

Yum.

Post-script:  In the future, it might be fun to substitute the vodka with a flavoured alcohol, like green Chartreuse.  These are flavours that go well with the thyme in this recipe, and I think Chartreuse might be tasty with the pomegranate as well...