Three Fresh Ways to Blend Your Margarita
A classic textbook margarita is the perfect summer drink. It’s tart, heady, and sweet enough – a real ride-or-die cocktail , if there ever was one. But I can’t help but mess with things, even perfect things, because that’s my nature. I play, tweak and fuck because god forbid I experience the same thing twice (or worse, get bored).
It’s probably frustrating to live with – you’ll never eat the same spaghetti sauce more than once! — but my aversion to predictability and consistency makes me good at this particular job if I’m trying in a romantic relationship. Here are three ways to play around with the classic Margarita if, like me, you can’t leave it alone.
Salt the drink, not the glass
Imagine serving someone a scrambled egg with a rim of salt around the rim of a plate, or a cup of coffee with sugar on the rim of a mug. Nobody would accept it.
A salt rim on a margarita certainly looks appropriate, but it’s not an effective way to spice up a drink. Salt tastes good in summer drinks—even drinks that aren’t margami —but having to lick your glass before every sip is inefficient and a little silly. Just season the drink for real and salt right in the shaker.
A healthy pinch is usually enough for one drink, but you can also get a super accurate dose with a saline solution of 50 grams of salt (Eater recommends Maldon) to 200 grams of boiling water , so you can add it drop by drop. You’ll get all the flavor benefits of a salty rim without the awkwardness of licking things.
Swirl a little spice in there
Some people like spicy margies and I understand that. There is something invigorating and dangerous about combining capsaicin with alcohol.
There are several ways to spice up a cocktail. You can mix the pepper slices in a shaker, make a chilli syrup, or finely grate the jalapeno and shake the microplane in a glass (or pitcher). You’ll get all those spicy, aromatic oils as well as cute little bits of jalapeño (or whatever fresh pepper you desire), but you can also easily control the spice levels. Rub a little, rub a lot, then shake and you’re done. (Just remember to wash your hands after rubbing them. There is no pepper oil in the pipettes.)
Make an easy exchange
A margarita is a basic sour drink without too many ingredients, usually three or four. They’re pretty streamlined, but many seemingly perfect arrangements are spruced up with little tweaks.
Swapping tequila for smoky mezcal is the most obvious trick, but I usually use it during the winter months. For a more summery swap, I like to mess around with liquor and citrus , swapping Cointreau for Luxardo Maraschino liqueur and lime juice for lemon. Luxardo has a wonderful dry, almost almond, cherry flavor and is my favorite, but as I mentioned earlier , feel free to experiment with it:
You can use banana liqueur, limoncello (paired with lime juice for a double citrus effect), or even fruit brandy. For citrus, lime is never bad, but lemon, Meyer lemon, and grapefruit (when paired with the appropriate liqueur) are delicious.
As with any experiment, try not to change more than one or two variables at a time, otherwise your taste may be confused. (Actually, you should only change one variable at a time, but that’s not real science, so we’ll allow a couple.)