Watermelon Mint Granita

 Quick, quick.

Lets sneak in one last Watermelon Mint Granita into our humid saturated days before the rain kicks in and the coffee mugs come out of hibernation!
 

I first met the Granita when I was still in school. This icy miracle was the savior of our summers when school would be on for an extra few weeks for us “big kids”.

Even though we’ve now grown out of that status into the era of unsuccessful adulthood of the 20s, the granita still remains a mighty summery savior. The icy chips which their crunch and immediate disintegration to this cool tangy juice will never fail to bring me joy.

As for the watermelon, well, I’m going to miss you when you’re gone.

So the three main reasons I love this recipe is ..

• Because its fairly an intuitive one. Even though I will be giving out rough measurements, you’ll see that it’ll be the best to taste things along as you go to best match this to your own personal tastes.
• Because even though the start-to-end time is quite long, the actual time invested in making granita is close to nothing. Making it one of the best ‘show-off-how-fancy-your-culinary-skills-are’ recipe. *wink wink nudge nudge*
• Because its so VERY easily customized. Make it a strawberry-mint granita. A blueberry-basil granita. A mango-basil granita. A mango-peach granita. The possibilities are endless!

So for our last tribute to the summer, you’ll need –

Anyway, we start of by squeezing out some lovely lemon juice.

Tear out a handful of mint leaves for company.

In a big bowl, drop in all your watermelon chunks and blitz away.

Within a few minutes, you’ll end up with this bright red juice.

At this point, if you want you can strain out the juice for a smoother, slightly less pulpy juice.
Here, I just let it be as it is.

Now check the sweetness of the watermelon.

In accordance to that, add in some sugar to sweeten the deal.

Pour in the tart lemon juice.

Its lovely how this tartness makes the end result even sweeter than what it’d be without it!

Finally, add in the chopped mint.

Finally, this is what the juice would look like.
 

Pour this entire watermelon mint juice out into a tray. (Any kind would do, but an aluminum one would help freeze relatively faster than glass – because science!)

Honestly, you could just drink this as a juice right now. But we’ll go the extra mile.

Finally, stick this tray into the freezer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take out the tray. You’ll see the juice slowly icing up.

Since we need granita and not one solid block of watermelon mint ice, grab a fork and just scrape through the entire tray.

Don’t worry. It will be majorly liquid at the bottom of the tray at this point.

Stick it back into the freezer for 30 min.

After 30 min, bring it back out and give it another round of scraping.
You see how this scraping makes these icy granules we love?

One more time, bring it out – scrape – stick it back in.

Continue doing this a couple of times more till you finally get a texture like this.
(I had to repeat this exercise about 5 times, but this number would really depend on your freezer)

Once achieved, pull out the fancy glasses.
Scoop out some of the icy goodness and garnish with a sprig of mint.

Immediate consumption of the granita is essential, of course.
But honestly, who’d want to wait?

The Watermelon Mint Granita has always been a favorite – though the versatile nature of a granita really makes it easy to love many flavours at once!

I’d love to hear some of your flavour favorites too 🙂