As I mentioned in my presentation at the Fiery Food Show, cocktail recipes can be intimidating, particularly when you’re trying to make drinks quickly. Now that we’ve had an introduction to tequila, it’s time to get serious about cocktail recipes.
Most tequila cocktails call for a blanco tequila, and if the recipe doesn’t specify, that should be your default. Like I said in last week’s post, the more a tequila is aged, the less it tastes like tequila, and the more it takes on spicy, whiskey-like qualities, and those are not the types of flavors people expect in their Margaritas.
The easiest way to learn cocktail recipes, in general, is to learn some common cocktail ratios, like 1:1:1, 3:2:1, and 2:1:1. Each of these digits represent common cocktail ingredients: spirit, citrus and sweet, usually in that order. These ratios don’t have to be taken as law, but they do provide excellent guidelines for learning a bunch of recipes with no memorization whatsoever. Don’t like your drink so sour? Then swap the ingredients in the citrus and sweet ratios. Make sense?
Here are some of the most popular tequila cocktails for you to make on Cinco de Mayo this year, along with the ratios they follow. In Part 1 of this series, I gave you the classic Margarita recipe. Did you notice the ratio it follows?
- 2 oz tequila
- 1 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
- 1 oz triple sec (orange liqueur)
- Combine the ingredients in a shaker.
- Shake with ice and strain into a salt-rimmed glass.
- Garnish with a lime wedge.
Our second recipe uses the 1:1:1 ratio – equal parts of each ingredient.
- 1 oz tequila
- 1 oz gin
- 1 oz lemon juice
- a dash of grenadine
- Combine the ingredients in a shaker.
- Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
- Garnish with a lemon wedge.
Greg Mays is the Managing Editor of www.simple-cocktails.com.
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