Cooking With Spirits

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Mixed Drinks

Zombie Cocktail Recipe

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THE ZOMBIE COCKTAIL This tropical drink by legendary Donn Beach of Don the Beachcomber restaurant kicked off the Tiki craze.

 

ABOUT THE ZOMBIE COCKTAIL

This tropical drink by legendary Donn Beach of Don the Beachcomber restaurant kicked off the Tiki craze. Legend has it that Donn Beach originally concocted the Zombie to help a hung-over customer get through a business meeting. The customer returned several days later to complain that he had been turned into a zombie for his entire trip. Its smooth, fruity taste works to conceal its extremely high alcoholic content. Don the Beachcomber restaurants limit their customers to two Zombies apiece because of their potency, which Beach said could make one "like the walking dead."

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The Best Mojitos Recipe

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The Best Mojitos Recipe. This is an authentic recipe for mojito is sized to make a pitcher full but you can easily change it to a single serving.

What's A Mojito?

Mojito (/moʊˈhiːtoʊ/; Spanish: [moˈxito]) is a traditional Cuban highball. Traditionally, a mojito is a cocktail that consists of five ingredients: white rum, sugar (traditionally sugar cane juice), lime juice, soda water, and mint. ... Mint leaves and lime wedges are used to garnish the glass.

How strong is that mojito?

Depending on how it's made, it could contain as much alcohol as two glasses of wine. A "standard drink" is the amount of alcohol in a 12-ounce beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. It's a useful way to track alcohol consumption. But the multiple ingredients of mixed drinks make for a harder count.

Ingredients

 

  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • ¾ cup water
  • ⅔ cup packed fresh mint leaves (1 oz.)
  • 2 cups (16 oz.) white rum (such as Bacardí Superior)
  • 1 cup fresh lime juice (from 8 limes)
  • 2 cups club soda
  • 1 lime, thinly sliced into rounds
  • Lime peel strips
  • Mint sprigs

How to Make It

Step 1

Stir together sugar, water, and mint leaves in a small saucepan; bring to a simmer over medium-high, stirring to dissolve sugar. Simmer, undisturbed, until mint wilts and syrup tastes minty, about 3 minutes. Remove and discard mint. Chill syrup until cold, about 30 minutes.

Step 2

Stir together mint syrup, rum, and lime juice in a large pitcher. Chill at least 1 hour or up to 3 days.

Step 3

When ready to serve, gently stir club soda into mixture in the pitcher, and add lime rounds. Pour evenly into 6 ice-filled glasses. Garnish glasses with lime peel strips and mint sprigs.

 

The Best Mojitos Recipe. This is an authentic recipe for mojito is sized to make a pitcher full but you can easily change it to a single serving.

The Best Mojitos Recipe

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Ingredients
  

  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • ¾ cup water
  • ⅔ cup packed fresh mint leaves 1 oz.
  • 2 cups 16 oz. white rum (such as Bacardí Superior)
  • 1 cup fresh lime juice from 8 limes
  • 2 cups club soda
  • 1 lime thinly sliced into rounds
  • Lime peel strips
  • Mint sprigs

Instructions
 

  • Stir together sugar, water, and mint leaves in a small saucepan; bring to a simmer over medium-high, stirring to dissolve sugar. Simmer, undisturbed, until mint wilts and syrup tastes minty, about 3 minutes. Remove and discard mint. Chill syrup until cold, about 30 minutes.
  • Stir together mint syrup, rum, and lime juice in a large pitcher. Chill at least 1 hour or up to 3 days.
  • When ready to serve, gently stir club soda into mixture in the pitcher, and add lime rounds. Pour evenly into 6 ice-filled glasses. Garnish glasses with lime peel strips and mint sprigs.

Fish Bowl Cocktail Recipe

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This Fish Bowl Cocktail is a fun party drink, perfect for sharing with friends! You can think of it as a grown-up spin on a classic punch.

INGREDIENTS

  • Ice
  • 3 ounces coconut rum
  • 3 ounces blue curacao
  • 3 ounces vodka
  • Big splash pineapple juice
  • ½ cup sweet and sour mix
  • Big splash lemon-lime soda
  • Lemon and lime slices, for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

Add all ingredients in a large bowl or pitcher. Stir and serve in glasses over more ice. What could be easier? Not much!

Final Touch Fishbowl 1.3 Liter (44 Ounce) Glass

  • Glass
  • Extra thick stem provides a comfortable hold and added stability
  • Holds up to 1.3 L (44 oz) with plenty of room for garnishes, ice, and umbrellas
  • Ideal for holding oversized margaritas, daiquiris, blue lagoons or any other beverage
  • Dishwasher safe

More Adult Treats

If you're looking for a great daiquiri recipe, try this frozen strawberry daiquiri recipe. This recipe four-ingredient strawberry daiquiri is ready in five minutes! That means you'll be in and out of the kitchen in no time!

Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe

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Lemony, sweet, sour and super easy to make. This Lemon Drop Cocktail is the perfect drink to enjoy any day!

A lemon drop is a vodka-based cocktail that has a lemony, sweet and sour flavor, prepared using lemon juice, triple sec and simple syrup. It has been described as a variant of, or as "a take on", the Vodka Martini. It is typically prepared and served straight up – chilled with ice and strained.

The drink was invented sometime in the 1970s by Norman Jay Hobday, the founder, and proprietor of Henry Africa's bar in San Francisco, California. Some variations of the drink exist, such as blueberry and raspberry lemon drops. It is served at some bars and restaurants in the United States, and in such establishments in other areas of the world.

INGREDIENTS  

  • 1 ½ ounces good quality vodka
  • ½ ounce Triple Sec
  • 1 teaspoon superfine sugar or to taste
  • ¾ ounce lemon juice freshly squeezed
  • Ice cubes
  • Superfine sugar for dipping the glasses
  • Lemon thinly sliced

INSTRUCTIONS 

  • In a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice, add the vodka, triple sec, sugar and lemon juice. Shake well.
  • Take a lemon wedge and rub the top edge area of the martini glass. Dip the edge into the superfine sugar.
  • Pour the drink into a sugar-rimmed martini glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.
  • Enjoy!

Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe

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Prep Time 5 minutes
Calories 162 kcal

Ingredients
  

  • 1 ½ ounces good quality vodka
  • ½ ounce Triple Sec
  • 1 teaspoon superfine sugar or to taste
  • ¾ ounce lemon juice freshly squeezed
  • Ice cubes
  • Superfine sugar for dipping the glasses
  • Lemon thinly sliced

Instructions
 

  • In a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice, add the vodka, triple sec, sugar and lemon juice. Shake well.
  • Take a lemon wedge and rub the top edge area of the martini glass. Dip the edge into the superfine sugar.
  • Pour the drink into a sugar-rimmed martini glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.
  • Enjoy!

Scotch, Whiskey and Bourbon, What’s the Difference Between Them?

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The main difference between scotch and whiskey is geographic, but also ingredients and spellings. Scotch is whisky made in Scotland, while bourbon is whiskey made in the U.S.A, generally Kentucky. Scotch is made mostly from malted barley, while bourbon is distilled from corn. If you’re in England and ask for a whisky, you’ll get Scotch. But in Ireland, you’ll get Irish whiskey.

What is Scotch?

Technically, Scotch is whisky (spelled without the "e") that must be produced in Scotland, made from mostly malted barley and aged in oak barrels for three years or more. (The number following the name on a bottle of Scotch tells you how long it was aged.) Some Scotch tastes a lot like bourbon, but with a signature smokiness that lingers at the tail-end of a tasting. For this reason, some people avoid it, but for others, the acquired taste only makes the experience better. We think this pairs nicely with some stews and smoked meats.

For a whiskey to call itself bourbon, its mash, the mixture of grains from which the product is distilled, must contain at least 51% corn. (The rest of the mash is usually filled out with malted barley and either rye or wheat.) ... The distillate must be aged in a new charred oak barrel.
 

Rye

"Rye whiskey" can refer either to American whiskey, which must be distilled from at least 51% rye and aged two years or more, or Canadian whisky, which may or may not actually include any rye in its production process. Full in body and spice, rye -- which had been playing second fiddle to its closest cousin, bourbon, ever since U.S. corn production increased in the decades following Prohibition -- has been making a steady comeback on cocktail menus across the country in the last decade.

Rye's bold, slightly burning bite cuts right through sweet mixers, making for intense beverages with layers of flavor.

Does it Matter in Cooking?

Yes, it does, but you can interchange them. Remember, the alcohol content may be different, and the flavor will be too.

The Whiskey Sour

If you are looking for a great drink to use whiskey in Real Life with Lulu will show you How to Make a Whiskey Sour. 

How to Make Your Own Superfine Sugar or Castor Sugar

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Superfine Sugar

Superfine sugar is favored for sweetening drinks or preparing a meringue. Caster sugar is the name of very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough to fit though a sugar "caster" or sprinkler.

It is sold as "superfine" sugar in the United States.

Because of its fineness, it dissolves more quickly than regular white sugar and so is especially useful in meringues and cold liquids. It is not as fine as confectioner’s sugar, which has been crushed mechanically (and generally mixed with a little starch to keep it from clumping).

If the recipe calls for superfine, powdered, or brown sugar, you can actually make any of them at home from regular white sugar. "If you don't have it in the house, you don't have to run out to the store—it's totally fine to make it yourself, All you need is a blender (or food processor) and a bit of ingenuity.

Name Variations

  • bar sugar
  • instant dissolving sugar
  • berry sugar
  • castor sugar
  • caster sugar
  • casters' sugar
  • caster's sugar

How to Make Superfine Sugar

f you don’t have any caster sugar on hand, you can make your own by grinding granulated sugar for a couple of minutes in a food processor (this also produces sugar dust, so let it settle for a few moments before opening the food processor). For one cup: Grind one cup and two teaspoons of white granulated sugar in a blender, coffee bean type grinder or food processor for 30 seconds.

Rimming the Glass with Sugar

Many cocktails, including our lemon drop cocktail, call for rimming the glass with superfine sugar. The rim of the glass is moistened just a bit and then dipped into the superfine sugar. Lightly tap the side of the glass to remove any excess sugar.

Let us know in the comments section if you have any questions or tips related to making superfine sugar at home.