Stir & Strain

triple sec

Jalapeño Margarita

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Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.comThis post is brought to you by Tequila Cazadores.

Grab your cocktail shakers! It’s National Margarita Day folks!

Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.comOut of all the drink holidays out there, this is probably one of my favorites. Why? Well, who can say no to a Margarita?! Well made and they’re a perfect blend of sweet and sour, and as I mentioned earlier in the week… SO riffable. To help celebrate, I’ve teamed up with Cazadores Tequila, a recognized premium tequila since 1922, to bring you all one of my FAV variations, the Jalapeño Margarita.

Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.comCazadores has been one of my go-to tequilas for quite some time. It’s super reasonably priced but it’s also 100% blue agave—not mixed! Cazadores has five types of tequila in their portfolio: Blanco, Reposado, Añejo, Extra Añejo, and Cristalino; for today’s recipe we’ll be using the Blanco (you’ll recognize the bottle by its hint of blue and the stag gracing the front). Because we’re making a mixed drink, the Blanco expression is the perfect product. It’s light, clean taste has a slightly sweet finish that highlights the agave. It also makes for a balanced cocktail so you taste all the components.

Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.comNow, I can take a bit of heat and I love the play of spicy and sweet here. That said, you can totally adjust this to your spiciness level. Want more spicy? Keep the seeds in the jalapeño slice and add two if you’d like. Just want a hint of spice? Take out the seeds and don’t garnish with a second jalapeño slice (the longer the garnish sits in your glass, the more spice it imparts to your drink! Remember that!).

Ok! Let’s shake up some cocktails! And remember, if you celebrate with one of these for #NationalMargaritaDay, remember to tag us so we can peep your creation!

Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.com

Jalapeño Margarita

Recipe Courtesy of Manny Hinojosa, Global Brand Ambassador

1-1/2 part Cazadores Tequila Blanco
1/2 part premium Triple Sec
1/2 part agave nectar
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 slice of jalapeño

Method: In a cocktail shaker with ice combine  all the ingredients, shake, and serve over the rocks in glass.

Garnish: with lime, jalapeño slice and salt optional.

Cazadores Jalapeño Margarita // stirandstrain.com

Electric Sidecar

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A couple months ago my husband went to this reading an author was giving, and I guess to make things more interesting they also had a white elephant gift exchange (that’s the only reason I could think of for holding one). You all know what a white elephant gift exchange is right? That’s when people bring really stupid gifts and then exchange them.. trying to be ironic, or hip or something. Anyways, he came home with this bottle of liquor that was all in Japanese and what he claimed was “like Jägermeister”. But from Japan. The box looked like something from a 70’s dollar store and that alone kept me from even opening and smelling it for this whole time. Until now. Maybe because it’s become a staple on the shelf in the kitchen that I have found myself warming up to it. Oh good morning weird unknown Japanese liquor. No, I don’t think I will try you today. Maybe tomorrow.

Well now the day has come. But first, obviously, I had to look it up on the internet and figure out what the hell it was first. Oh, it’s called Denki Bran. And this article I found in The Japan Times Online sums it up as a “blend of brandy, gin, wine, vermouth, curacao and herbs”. Dang. That’s a lot of crap in there already.

Seeing that brandy made the first in the list of ingredients… well, this list. And also according to the article, Bran is Japanese for Brandy? (In the 5 minutes I spent looking around the internet I couldn’t confirm this so I’ll just be lazy for now and assume the person is probably correct) I wanted to use this in place of a Brandy base. After looking around for some ideas I landed on the Sidecar. And trying to be really clever with naming a drink, and that denki is Japanese for electricity, I have named this the Electric Sidecar.

1-1/2 oz Denki Bran
3/4 oz of Triple Sec
1 oz of Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice (I used Meyer Lemons since I have bags of them hanging around the house right now)
granulated sugar for sugared-rim garnish

Shake all of the ingredients in a shaker with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass with sugared rim.

This took a couple passes and ultimately I had to decrease the triple sec and up the lemon juice. Perhaps because the meyer lemon juice is sweet as it is, the drink needed to have the sweet of the triple sec toned down. The Denki Bran has some anise flavor, some citrus notes but also at the same time is sharp and woodsy. Maybe because it’s packed with so many ingredients. The biting medicinal taste of the liquor all but disappears when mixed here, adding some savory notes to the intense citrus in the drink.

Alright, my copy of the Joy of Mixology arrived in the mail. I’m going to go bury myself in that for a couple days and come back with some fizzy drinks and a bunch of recipes on how to use up bags of lemons that are crowding your kitchen counters.