Margarita: the classic Cinco de Mayo cocktail

Are you ready for Cinco de Mayo?  Margaritas are my favorite Tequila drink and the favorite cocktail of the country, based on sales.  According to industry sources, the Margarita has an average hourly sale rate of 185,000 – that’s over four million a day!  They are delicious and it’s easy to have one too many, so drink wisely. Frozen Margaritas are a good idea to slow your consumption because if you drink a frozen Margarita too fast, you’ll get brain freeze, so you must drink it slowly.  For making frozen (or blended) drinks, as opposed to shaken drinks, you need a good quality blender.  If you have to buy a new blender, don’t get a cheap one.  Check some consumer ratings to make sure you’re getting a high quality brand. 

The Utah State Store has a variety of Tequilas on sale (special price adjustment) this month.  For making Margaritas, you can use gold Tequila (for everyday) or a better Tequila for special occasions (or because you like it).  Sauza® Gold and Jose Cuervo® Especial are decent gold Tequilas.  On the other hand, if you haven’t tried silver (or plata) Tequilas, you really should broaden your horizons.  1800 Silver Select (on sale this month) would be a good one to try.  There are a lot of more expensive Tequilas available, and it’s nice to have a bottle of Reposado or Añejo around the house.  You can taste a difference, even in Margaritas, but any good, smooth Tequila will make a fine Margarita, but you might want to save your better Tequilas for sipping.

The following recipe references “bar sugar”.  Bar sugar is more finely ground than normal sugar, but is not powdered sugar.  If you can’t find bar sugar, buy “Bakers’ Sugar” and use it.  The finer sugar dissolves faster in cocktails.  Keep some in a small container in your bar, and refill it as necessary.  Some prefer not to put sugar in their Margaritas, while others like theirs sweet, so ask before mixing.  Margaritas taste much better when you use freshly squeezed lime juice, but you can use ReaLime® lime juice with (optional) sugar or Rose’s® Sweetened Lime Juice (and skip the sugar) if you must (i.e. are out of fresh limes). 

If you drink a lot of Margaritas, you may want to create your own finely tuned Margarita recipe by altering the proportions to fit your own taste.  The same proportions will work for a Margarita rocks, or one shaken and served straight up.  If you use a high quality Tequila, you might want to upgrade the Triple Sec to Cointreau® or Grand Marnier®.  And finally, a word about salt.  Salt was originally used to kill the burn of cheap Tequila.  The better the tequila you use, the less salt you need, and if the Tequila is good enough, you should be drinking it from a snifter and not mixing it into Margaritas.  On the other hand, you might want to check out my special Cinco de Mayo glass rimming technique.

Classic Margarita

2 oz. Tequila

Juice of one freshly squeezed lime (about 1 oz.) or lime juice

½ oz. Triple Sec

½ tsp. Simple syrup or 1 tsp. Bar Sugar (optional!)

Rim a glass with salt, if desired.  Blend ingredients with ice (9 cubes from my ice maker – experiment) until smooth, ending up at high speed.  (Or combine with ice in a shaker if you prefer yours up or on the rocks.)  A frozen Margarita should be thick enough to form peaks, but liquid enough to pour into a glass rimmed with salt (see my special rimming technique) and garnished with a lime wheel.  Olé!

Margarita Olé! Festive Glass Rimming for Cinco de Mayo

Want to give your Margaritas a special flare for your Cinco de Mayo party this year?  This special glass rimming is just the thing you need to make your Margaritas memorable (well, some good tequila wouldn’t hurt either).  You will surprise and delight your guests when you rim your glasses in the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green using this fairly simple technique. 

My wife is a great shopper, and she will often pick up rimming salts or sugars when she sees them on sale during her extensive shopping expeditions throughout the Salt Lake City area.  The result is that I have such a large collection that it can be hard to remember just what I have stuck away in the pantry (no room in the bar).  Last year I was looking at my white, green, and orange rimming salts when I realized that I almost had a match for the colors in the Mexican flag.  Hey, I thought, I can use all three at once to improve the presentation of my Margaritas.

There’s no need to buy three colors of rimming salt (I couldn’t find red salt, anyway); you can make your own.  Just take some regular white rimming salt (or other coarse salt) and put it in a small plastic container that has a lid.  Add a few drops of food coloring, put on the lid, and shake briskly.  Open the container and check the contents.  If there are clumps, you put in too much food coloring, add a little more salt and shake again.  If the color is too light, add another drop of food coloring and shake again.  Do this for any colors you need.

Once the colored salts are ready, take a rimming tray that’s large enough to fit your Margarita glasses (or you can use a saucer) and fill one third with green salt.  Moving clockwise, fill the next third with white salt and fill the final third with the red.  You don’t have to measure with geometric precision, just take a good guess and try not to mix the colors.  I usually spoon the salt in toward the middle of each third and carefully nudge it toward the boundaries.  I normally leave the salts in my rimming tray (covered with plastic wrap) between Margarita sessions and refill the salts as needed.

The best technique for actually rimming the glass is to rub a slice of lime around the rim to get it good and sticky.  Try to get more on the outside of the rim than on the inside so you don’t get too much salt in your Margarita.  Dip the glass into the salt, being careful not to twist it, and set it upright on your bar.  If any salt dislodges and falls into the glass, invert the glass to dump it out.  Garnish the glass with a lime wheel between the green and red salts, and your glass is ready for the Margarita. Have a great party.  Olé!

 

Tax Day Cocktails

Yes, there it is, looming on the horizon.  Tax day.  I am a tax procrastinator; I willingly admit it.  It may have something to do with the returns for three different states I have to fill out, or the fourth state return I have to do to help out my dad, but I just hate doing taxes.  I never finish on the last day (I’m not that much of a procrastinator), but I come close.  Especially when I have to pay in, like I do this year.  On tax day, I will be ready for a good stiff drink or two (or three), and I would guess that the same is true for you.  So I’m not here to recommend some cute cocktail that takes a lot of time, I’m here to suggest some classic cocktails that are easy to make and easy to double for those of us that need a good stiff drink once they have their taxes done.  Just remember, you may have to go to work Thursday, so don’t overdo it.  Have a great cocktail, curse the taxman soundly, and get a good night’s sleep.

The Sazarac is reputed to be the original cocktail, first concocted in “partay central,” Nouveau Orleans.  This brown beauty is almost straight whiskey and deserves to be treated with respect.  Sazaracs are traditionally (and according to my recipe) served in an old-fashioned glass, but in honor of tax day I will tell you one of my darkest secrets: I like to drink Sazaracs out of a cocktail glass.  Yes, I know it’s perverse, but I like to take a cocktail glass out of the freezer, rinse it with Absinthe (coating the inside of the glass to the rim), strain in that heavenly mixture, and then drink my way around the rim of the glass so that I get that little hint of Absinthe with each sip of Sazarac.  The sensation can be almost orgasmic.

The Manhattan is another venerable cocktail.  It’s around 140 years old, and is sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill’s mother.  The more likely story is that it was concocted for a party she was throwing.  The ratio of whiskey to vermouth in a Manhattan can be as low as 1:1, but my recipe is considerably drier at 4:1.  You may also vary the bitters you use to influence the flavor and make this drink your own.  One secret to a good Manhattan is to use quality maraschino cherries.  If you have any Luxardo Marasche® Marasca Cherries, use them.  If not, I guess you’re stuck with the bright red, plastic ones… at least they taste good.  What the hell, if you’ve got your taxes done, drop in two cherries; you’ve earned them.

You didn’t think I would forget the Martini, did you?  Whether made with Gin or Vodka, a Martini is one of the old stand-bys for rapid intake of alcohol to dull the pain of paying taxes.  This cocktail supposedly originated during the California gold rush, so it’s kind of à propos to drink a Martini as you see your gold rushing away from you.  After the agony, it’s nice to have the biggest decision you must make be the choice between olive, onion, or lemon peel.  Decisions, decisions…

One final suggestion as your money goes south comes from south of the border: a Margarita.  I’ve always had a weakness for this cocktail.  You’ve probably noticed that my recipe is for a blended Margarita.  That doesn’t mean that I have anything against a Margarita on the rocks or straight up.  Au contraire, I tend to make my Margaritas frozen because they go down too fast otherwise.  For tax day, assuming your taxes are done, I recommend shaking your Margarita like a maraca and serving it straight up in a chilled cocktail glass with a lightly salted rim. Olé!  And death to taxes!

Photographs ©iStockphoto.com

Margarita

Margaritas are my favorite tequila drink.  I prefer frozen Margaritas because any other kind goes down too fast, but if you drink a frozen Margarita too fast, you’ll get brain freeze.  For making frozen (or blended) drinks, as opposed to shaken drinks, you need a good quality blender.  If you have to buy a new blender, check with consumer reports to make sure you’re getting a high quality brand.  I have a great KitchenAid ProLine® blender that I got a good deal on several years ago.

As I mentioned in my post on Stocking Your Bar, I usually use gold tequila (for everyday) or better (for special occasions) tequila.  I usually use Sauza® Gold and (sometimes) Jose Cuervo® Especial for Margaritas.  There are a lot of more expensive tequilas available, and I’ll sometimes buy a bottle of Reposado or Añejo when I find a good one on sale.  You can taste a difference, even in Margaritas, but any good, smooth tequila will make a fine Margarita.

The following recipe references “bar sugar”.  By bar sugar I mean sugar that is more finely ground than normal sugar, but not powdered sugar.  If you can’t find bar sugar, buy “Bakers’ Sugar” and use it.  The finer sugar dissolves faster in cocktails.  I keep some in a small container in my bar, and refill it as necessary.  That said, I prefer not to put sugar in my Margaritas, but my wife likes hers sweet.  Margaritas taste better when you use freshly squeezed lime juice, but you can use ReaLime® lime juice with (optional) sugar or Rose’s® Sweetened Lime Juice (and skip the sugar).  See my post On Limes to find out more on limes and how best to squeeze them.

This is my own finely tuned Margarita recipe.  If you drink a lot of Margaritas, you may want to alter the proportions to fit your own taste and create your own recipe.  These same proportions will work for a Margarita rocks, or one shaken and served straight up. If you use a high quality Tequila, you might want to upgrade the Triple Sec to Cointreau® or Grand Marnier®. 

Margarita

2 oz. Tequila

Juice of one freshly squeezed lime (about 1 oz.) or lime juice

½ oz. Triple Sec

1 tsp. Bar Sugar (optional!)

Blend with ice (9 cubes from my ice maker – experiment).  A frozen Margarita should be thick enough to form peaks, but liquid enough to pour into a glass rimmed with salt (see my special rimming technique) and garnished with a lime wheel.  Enjoy!