Regional Recipe
Granita al Limone
Italian lemon ice scraped into crystals
This is lemon ice: juice, sugar and water frozen slowly and scraped with a fork into coarse crystals.
Tested and written by Erika A. Cochran
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Prep
15 minutes
Cook
5 minutes
Serves
4
Difficulty
Easy
Region
Sicily
What you’ll need
Ingredients
Written for 4.
Showing quantities at 1× the original recipe.
- 1 cups lemon juice, strained
- ⅞ cup sugar
- 2½ cups water
- Zest of 1 lemon
At the stove
Instructions
Heat ⅞ cup of the water with the sugar and zest until dissolved, then cool completely.
Strain out the zest and mix the syrup with the lemon juice and the remaining water.
Pour into a shallow metal tray and freeze.
After 45 minutes, scrape the frozen edges into the centre with a fork.
Repeat every 30 minutes for about three hours, until the whole tray is loose crystals.
Serve straight away, in cold glasses.
Recipe notes
The texture comes entirely from the scraping — a blender gives you a slush, not a granita.
Traditionally eaten in the morning with brioche.
Context
Granita is documented across Sicily in many flavours, with regional differences in texture; the lemon version is the most widespread.
Sources: Editorial adaptation of documented Sicilian regional cooking, Casa Magnelli Kitchen
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