Margaritas

[Jack M]

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I'd like to share my favorite Margarita recipe. I've been working on it for years. I've tried all the mixes, Lime-ade, boiling, zest, recipes that take 2 days to brew, all kinds of ratios, and all kinds of tequilas. I've finally settled on a favorite:

1 part fresh squeezed lime juice

2 parts 100% blue agave tequila

1 part triple sec

0.75 part agave nectar

2 parts water

shake with ice

I prefer reposado or anejo tequilas for margaritas, usually reposado. They give the marg another dimension apart from silver tequilas. Patron is an easy choice for a top-shelf tequila, but Cabo Wabo is just as good for less money. El Tesoro Anejo has a very unique flavor and makes a bold margarita. Cuervo Traditional and Herradura are good on a budget. Cuervo Gold is swill.

Agave nectar is a honey-like sweetener that can be found in most supermarkets, often in the health-food section. It is the "secret ingredient". It has a mild flavor that incorporates into the margarita with much better transparency than sugar or simple-syrup, probably because it is made from the same stuff as tequila! It will also dissolve completely in cold liquid. When I was using sugar I would get inconsistent results because sometimes it would dissolve less than other times. The amount you use determines how sweet or bitter the marg will be. I'll vary mine from 1/2 part to 1 part, but usually 3/4.

Organic limes actually make a difference. Sometimes I'll use Key limes for a subtle change.

If you need to get drunk <i>right now</i>, use an 80 proof orange liqueur (Cointreau, Grand Marnier, etc) instead of triple sec.

Enjoy!

[Erik J]

Nice touch with the agave nectar. Very cool. 2 parts water seems like a lot but maybe it'll help with my upcoming hangover. I'm off to a Cinco party tonight, I'll give it a try. If I post tomorrow it was good, if I don't post for like 10 days it was REALLY good.

[Alaskan Rover]

....//....Organic limes actually make a difference. Sometimes I'll use Key limes for a subtle change.

Enjoy!

My sister and her family moved down to florida where she grows things like lemons, limes, pineapple, and even bananas. We've been down to visit many times and to this day I have not had a better margarita than i've had sitting on her back porch.

Margaritas are actually my favorite drink, and pretty much the only mixed-drink I ever order, so I can make this judgement based upon a pretty good sized pool of candidates.

While personal taste is exactly that...something personal, I think there are two reasons for these delicious margaritas:

1) The limes she grows are both organic AND actually a lemon/lime hybrid...borne of her own splicing of a lime tree and a lemon tree. The resultant fruit is an odd study of Mendelian principle. Sometimes these lemon/limes are half normal looking lemon, half normal looking lime; more often they are these strange polka-dotted variety...a diffuse mixture of the two fruits. It all depends upon which part of the tree they come from. I believe these hybrids are a primary reason for the unique and delicous margaritas and that tree is truly the "Goose that lays the golden egg" of lemon/lime "margarita trees"...and is the first tree protected during hurricanes.

2) She makes her own margarita salt from Atlantic ocean water that she dries in the hot sun. During the drying process, she sprinkles little amounts of juice from those same lemon/limes. Resulting in a very slightly lemony sea-salt, that the lips pick up on BEFORE the actual taste of the margarita itself.

I keep telling her she should write a book on margaritas....she keeps telling me to have another margarita.

I'll let her know about the nectar of agave. That may make an excellent margarita that much better.

I've got two margarita glasses primed and ready for tonight's Cinco de Mayo!!!

[Jack M]

Nice touch with the agave nectar. Very cool.

Yeah, I got the idea from a fellow tequila snob, and it was definitely the final touch I had been searching for. I no longer feel a need to continually tweak and test.

2 parts water seems like a lot

I know, it does, and I didn't try 2 parts for a long time just on principal. It makes the marg easier to drink without diluting the flavor significantly. This is with regular ice cubes though. With crushed ice probably 1 part is better.

Alaskan Rover, I bow to your sister... that is over the top!!

[heroshmero]

2) She makes her own margarita salt from Atlantic ocean water that she dries in the hot sun. During the drying process, she sprinkles little amounts of juice from those same lemon/limes. Resulting in a very slightly lemony sea-salt, that the lips pick up on BEFORE the actual taste of the margarita itself.

Yum! I'm licking my lips just thinking about that.

[Alaskan Rover]

For anyone living near whichever ocean wanting to make their own sea-salt, it's pretty easy, and you actually get more salt than you would think.

But I should have mentioned that she does boil the salt-water vigorously for a few minutes to kill any microorganisms. Then the key is a backyard with lots of sunlight and rolls of 3 ft wide black plastic. After the water has evaporated, you just crinkle-up the plastic, and the salt-crystals come right off into your container. i've tried it this way, myself...it works.

A gallon of sea-water will get about 1/4 pound or so of salt.

Salt is cheap...so it's not like you'd save money doing this, or anything. Sorta like making your own home-brew...just cool knowing you made it yourself from your own local ocean.

[bobdea]

agave syrup, bad news, best marketing ploy ever. most of it is not from blue agave and it actually is really bad for you. most brands are made with heat treatments to break down the starch into fructose which creates the same carcinogens found in corn syrup and it usually has a higher ratio of fructose than high fructose corn syrup. really bad for the your liver from what I understand.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I guess I'm just not a snob. I tried Jack's recipe in honour of Cinco de Mayo and just added some sugar instead as I didn't have any of the agave syrup and doubt it would be found here. I'm not normally a tequila drinker, just had a bottle lying around from my trip to Mexico last year. It was quite tasty nonetheless!

[Jack M]

Glad it worked out for you Neil.

Bob? We are talking about alcohol here. Not living to 100. :D

[skatha]

Allergic to tequila here, but, in honor of the upcoming hurricane season (starting June 1)

Here's my hurricane recipe

2 jiggers of Bacardi white (I'm not a liquor snob, sorry)

2 Jiggers of passion fruit juice

1 jigger of pineapple juice

dash of grenadine (enough to make it red)

spray of lime juice from a sliced lime

Serve over ice

I know this makes a double hurricane.....if you've ever been up chopping up downed trees, living by the light of a Coleman lantern and cooking on a propane camp stove indoors because the power is off for a week due to a hurricane, you only drink doubles (or more)

[Neil Gendzwill]

That sounds pretty complicated. How about this recipe?

Two jiggers Lagavulin

One glass container

Enjoy!

[Allee]

Allergic to tequila here ...

I'd have to kill myself.

[Michael Pukas]

agave syrup, bad news, best marketing ploy ever. most of it is not from blue agave and it actually is really bad for you. most brands are made with heat treatments to break down the starch into fructose which creates the same carcinogens found in corn syrup and it usually has a higher ratio of fructose than high fructose corn syrup. really bad for the your liver from what I understand.

Bob's right - agave "nectar" is a marketing scam and bad news for the body. It's not "natural" at all - chemically processed.

For your casual reading;

Agave: A Triumph of Marketing over Truth

Shocking! This 'Tequila' Sweetener is Far Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup

Maragritas are my favorite drink as well. And since I live in Little Mexico, or the New California as I like to call it, a little tequila feels right at home.

I use baker's sugar - or super fine sugar, or castor sugar - because it disolves in cold liquid. You can also take regular sugar of your choice and blitz it in the food processor to make it finer and easier to disolve. I like organic turbinado sugar for the caremelly flavor.

I add grapefruit juice to my mix when the Texas sweet reds are in season. I squeeze/scrape out all the pulp I can - from limes, grapefruits and a little lemon (no seeds or pith) - blitz the mix in the blender, w/ sugar to taste, to chop up the pulp and extract as much flavor/juice, and then strain the pulp out w/ a fine sive. The strained pulp is a treat as well!

I also add water to my mix - it's a lot of work to squeeze all that citrus, and little water makes it go farther!

I usually use a 100% agave white/silver tequila - I don't think it's worth it to use an expensive reposado/anejo tequila in a mixed dink. But hey, more power to you if you do!

[skatha]

I'd have to kill myself.

Don't be sooo dramatic!;)

Also good, get a container (about 1 quart size) fill with fresh pineapple and pour Stoli over it (the whole bottle)

Wait 3-4 days....

Note-I've tried this with Absolute and not as good....

[bobdea]

That sounds pretty complicated. How about this recipe?

Two jiggers Lagavulin

One glass container

Enjoy!

no no no, that's all wrong it's gotta be two jiggers of laphroaig

[Neil Gendzwill]

For your casual reading;

Agave: A Triumph of Marketing over Truth

Shocking! This 'Tequila' Sweetener is Far Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup

So both those articles are from the same site and say, in essence, that this sugar syrop contains a lot of sugar. BFD.

[Michael Pukas]

So both those articles are from the same site and say, in essence, that this sugar syrup contains a lot of sugar. BFD.

Yeah, the two articles say pretty much the same thing. It's TYPE of sugar that's a problem for the body, not just the fact that it contains a lot of sugar. The articles are basically saying Agave Nectar is a marketing scam. Just like Canola Oil - stay away from that too.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Yeah, well the opinion of many is that Mercola is a quack. He certainly ticked me off right away with his pop-up crap. Got any credible cites for this stuff?

[Michael Pukas]

Yeah, well the opinion of many is that Mercola is a quack.

No gonna debate that, but I bet most of the people who think he's a quack are "main-stream" and think most alternative health and nutrition issue are quaky as well. Each iof us needs to do our own homework and make up our own minds. Ignore mainstream media and especially commercial advertising!

There's a plethora of info out there. Pick and choose as you like.

agave nectar is a scam

canola oil is a scam

Whether or not Canola oil is healthy is probably much more controversial, but one factor for me is most of it is genetically modified. I'll stick with organic olive oil and grapeseed oils, thanks. mpp

[Neil Gendzwill]

Poking around a few of those links, it does seem like high-fructose products aren't very good for you. I don't think the odd dose in your margarita is going to kill you though.

The canola oil thing seems to be, as you say, a lot less clear. A lot of fear-mongering, a lot of debunking. I've got nothing against GM products at all, so I will continue to happily cook from canola. Some of it may even have come from our land - my wife still owns the home quarter, and canola is grown there from time to time.

[skatha]

If I fry, which is rarely....I do it in peanut oil....

[dano]

So I usually use Gran Centenario Plata for Margaritas.

It's quite comparable to the Patron silver and much cheaper. I always stock Patron Anajero for sipping on the rocks or for smooth shots.

Now for the Mystery:

Gran Centenario Plata is always 29.99 for a 750 at Kappy's.

Gran Centenario Reposado is $25 and ( amazingly ) 2 750s for $40.

I don't get it, the Plata should be the cheapest as it's bottled right out of the still, an the the Reposado should cost more as it is put in casks and slightly aged.

The other mystery is that the GC Reposado gives a hangover, and the GC Plata does not with the same ammount consumed. This does not happen with Patron or Corazon, the only other 2 brands I usually abuse.

As a cheap bastard, it's hard for me to pass up the 2 for $40 for supposedly better tequilla.

But I do, usually after staring at the bottles for 10 minutes....

[Jack M]

Grapefruit juice is bad for your liver. Check it. Also check my new avatar.

[nekdut]

Also check my new avatar.

I was watching ABC earlier this evening. What was that about your new avatar? :)