How to make liquid nitrogen sorbet: The Movie

August 25, 2000 - participants: Tom Reese, Josh Zimmerberg, the Zimmerberg gang, Jim Galbraith, Mark Terasaki (camera).

1. Grapefruit Juice. We used Tropicana, about 2/3 of a 1/2 gallon carton. The clear plastic bowl was probably not a great choice, it made some loud cracking noises during the freezing, though it didn't seem to leak. We've used a rubbermaid opaque plastic bowl in the past, or a pot.

2. Add sugar. We have tried not adding it in the past, but it just didn't taste right to us. The amount shown here was enough, in fact almost too much.

3. Preparations. Stir with a slotted spoon (or similar). It's usually done with two people. The fun job is pouring in the liquid nitrogen. The hard work job is stirring - sometimes a third person can take over for a while.

4. The freezing takes ~5 min with pretty vigorous stirring. The stirring is to prevent large blocks of ice forming against the side of the bowl. As Tom stays, you want to keep the ice crystals as small as possible! 5 min is longer than what one might expect it would take. Since this is too long to show as a web movie, we present it here several ways:
10x speeded up (no sound)
Audio only (real time)
The pouring sequence (real time with sound)
The end sequence (real time with sound)

Variations:
We've made quite a few variations with different kinds of fruit juices. One can also add alchol, for instance we've seen a recipe calling for grapefruit and campari. We've also made a champagne sorbet (sugar is added to this too).