Homemade Liqueurs and Infused Spirits: Innovative Flavor Combinations, Plus Homemade Versions of Kahlúa, Cointreau, and Other Popular Liqueurs (11 page)
Authors: Andrew Schloss
Tags: #liquor, #cofee, #home cocktails, #cocktails, #liqueurs, #popular liqueurs, #spirits, #creamy, #kahlua, #unsweetened infused, #flavored alcohol, #bar recipes, #sweetners, #distilled, #herbal, #nutty, #creative coctails, #flowery, #infused spirits, #clones, #flavorings, #margarita, #home bar, #recipes, #cointreau, #cocktail recipes, #alcohol, #caramel, #homemade liqueurs, #fruity, #flavoring alcohol
The sheer sensual fleshiness of ripe mango is so stunning that it is surprising how much flavor you notice when that flesh actually vanishes, which is exactly what happens in this tropical breeze of a liqueur. The mangoes release all of their lush fruit flavor directly into the rum. Use this liqueur instead of triple sec in your Margaritas. Pour it over rocks, spiked with a shake of jalapeño hot sauce, or blend it with coconut ice cream, rum, and ice for a dairy-free smoothie.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) dark rum (80 proof) - 3 very ripe mangoes, pitted and finely chopped
- Grated zest of 2 limes
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 1 cup
Simple Syrup
- 1.
Muddle the rum, mangoes, and both zests with a wooden spoon in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of mango, 3 to 5 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Cheers!
Makes a terrific Mango Martini (
page 248
).
The Italians make deceptively lethal digestifs known as
spaccafegati
(translates as “liver splitters”) by tincturing fruit in pure ethyl alcohol (190 proof) diluted with sugar syrup. The most famous
spaccafegato
is limoncello, and this orange-mango liqueur is its tropical offspring. I blend the fruit with a less deadly combo of vodka and golden rum, which bolsters the floral fragrance of mango with the caramelized sweetness of rum, and requires far less added sugar than when using pure alcohol. Serve Mangocello very cold in well-chilled shot glasses.
Makes about 1 quart
- 2 cups vodka (80–100 proof)
- 2 cups golden rum (80 proof)
- 4 very ripe mangoes, pitted and finely chopped
- Grated zest of 3 large oranges
- 1 cup
Caramelized Simple Syrup
- 1.
Combine the vodka, rum, mangoes, and orange zest in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of mango and orange, 3 to 5 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
- Artichoke (Copycat Cynar)
- CelRay Surprise
- Cool as a Cuke
- Corny Corn “Liquor”
- Finocchio
- Garden Mint
- Gingergold
- Primeval
- Pumpkin Pie
- Radicchio Campari
- Red Lightning
- Rocket Launch
- Rüt
- Smoky Bacon Bourbon
- Sugar Beet
- Sunny Splash
- Sweet-Heat Firewater
- Sweet Pea
- Sweet-Pepper Surprise
- Tomato Essence
- Yammy
The very notion of flavoring liqueurs with vegetables seems odd. For one thing, liqueurs are sweet by definition, and vegetables definitely are not. In fact, the concept of sweetness is such anathema to our typical notion of vegetables that we have created a whole other culinary category for sweet vegetables — we call them fruit. Rhubarb, for example, isn’t a fruit at all, not even botanically. It’s a stem, but we call it fruit because it needs sugar to become palatable. On the other hand, a tomato is clearly a fruit — its flesh houses the seeds for its plant — but do we call it thus? No, never; it’s verboten.
Or consider cucumbers and watermelons. Botanically both are fruits. Both are green, contain the seeds of their plant, and have a rind surrounding lots of moist, pulpy flesh. The only reason cucumbers are considered vegetables and watermelons are not is that watermelons are sweet.
Once you catch on that the difference between vegetables and fruit is largely semantic, it becomes easy to start messing around with these versatile ingredients. And this chapter is a good place to get your feet wet and your veggies sweetened.
The process is the same, except that in many vegetable liqueurs you add the sugar syrup along with the vegetable for tincturing. Especially with hard, dry vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, and beets, adding the syrup early ensures that there is enough moisture in the tincture to capture all of the flavorful elements.
Hard fruits and vegetables also need a longer tincturing time to break down fibers and release those flavorful components, so you will see that many vegetable liqueurs go through the tincturing process for more than a week.
It is especially fun to play with the savory elements in vegetables — meaty flavors in mushrooms; bitter alkaloids in endive, artichoke, and radicchio: and creamy-starchy components in potatoes and corn. It’s enlightening to expose the natural fruity sweetness of bell peppers, tomatoes, and beets. Cucumbers, fennel, and celery lend clean vegetal refreshment to their liqueurs, while arugula reveals more of its spicy personality when reduced to pure flavor.
In a class of vegetables where status is measured in Scoville units, the perennially pleasant, unchallenging, heat-free sweet bell pepper wins the Ms. Congeniality award hands down. Red bell peppers are just ripe green peppers, and like all ripe fruit they are juicier, sweeter, and more aromatic than their younger counterparts. But when this nice girl of capsicums is infused into pepper-scented reposado tequila, perfumed with orange oil, and sweetened with cactus syrup, she takes her rightful place as the saucy señorita of potent potables.
Makes about 1 quart
- 2 cups vodka (80–100 proof)
- 1 cup reposado tequila (80 proof)
- 3 red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
- Grated zest of 1 orange
- 1 cup agave syrup
- 1.
Combine the vodka, tequila, bell peppers, orange zest, and agave syrup in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of bell pepper, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
L’chaim!
Use in a supernatural Bloody Mary, a Manhattan Rustico (
page 246
), or a Capsaicin Cocktail (
page 251
).
In vegetable commerce, carotene is gold. The herald of vitamins C and A, a pure gold color ensures nutrition and natural sweetness. In this gilded liqueur, the color and flavor of ripe yellow bell peppers and carrots combine with the aroma from a small amount of fresh ginger to form a sweet and spicy triumvirate.
Makes about 1 quart
- 2 cups golden rum (80 proof)
- 1 cup vodka (80–100 proof)
- 2 yellow bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
- 2 carrots, peeled, ends trimmed, and coarsely shredded
- 1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, finely shredded
- 1 cup
Simple Syrup
- 1.
Combine the rum, vodka, bell peppers, carrots, and ginger in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of bell pepper and ginger, 7 to 10 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Santé!
Rely on this liqueur’s benign power in a Martini or Golden Caipirinha (
page 246
).
There are root beers, root whiskey, and complex aromatic liqueurs that use licorice root or sassafras in their secret formulas, but I believe this is the first alcoholic dram to be made from 100 percent vegetal root stock. It is earthy and terrestrially sweet, primal, and fertile — the tipple of preindustrial man. Employ its primordial power to reinvigorate an Old-Fashioned or inebriate a classic root beer float.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) rye (80 proof) - 2 parsnips, peeled, ends trimmed, and coarsely shredded
- 2 carrots, peeled, ends trimmed, and coarsely shredded
- 1 beet, peeled, ends trimmed, and coarsely shredded
- 2 tablespoons finely shredded fresh horseradish
- 1 cup
Brown Simple Syrup
- 1.
Combine the rye, parsnips, carrots, beet, horseradish, and simple syrup in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten the vegetables. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of root vegetables, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Bottoms Up!
See Rooted Old-Fashioned (
page 249
) and Rüt Beer Float (
page 255
).
Beets are sweet (beet sugar is the second most common sweetener on the planet), but you’d never know it by the way my mom cooked them. Dirt tasted better. The trick to capturing the natural candy-like quality of beets is to trap the sugar. If you are eating the vegetable, that means keeping the beet away from liquid, which dissolves the sugar. If you’re drinking your beets, it means soaking them in sweetened alcohol until they relinquish their ruby hue and stored sugar into the spirit.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) light rum (80 proof) - 4 red beets, peeled, ends trimmed, and coarsely shredded
- Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
- 1 cup
Simple Syrup
- 1.
Combine the rum, beets, orange zest, and simple syrup in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of beets, about 7 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Salut!
Use liberally to rouge a Cosmopolitan.
Many experiments fail, thereby teaching you what you don’t know and pushing you to further experimentation. But sometimes the most far-fetched experiments yield surprisingly down-to-earth results. That is the case with my sojourns into the realm of bacon-potato liqueur. The yellow potatoes lend texture and a gentle golden glow, while the bacon blends elegantly with the bourbon and brown sugar, producing a sweet and savory, slightly smoky bourbon liqueur with a creamy finish.
Makes about 1 quart
- 1 fifth (750 ml/3
1
⁄
4
cups) bourbon (80 proof) - 3 golden potatoes, peeled and coarsely shredded
- 6 strips apple-smoked bacon, cooked until crisp, blotted dry and crumbled
- Pinch of smoked salt, like hickory- or apple-smoked
- 2 tablespoons celery seeds
- 1 cup
Brown Simple Syrup
- 1.
Combine the bourbon, potatoes, bacon, smoked salt, and celery seeds in a half-gallon jar. Stir to moisten everything. - 2.
Seal the jar and put it in a cool, dark cabinet until the liquid smells and tastes strongly of vegetables and subtly of bacon, 10 to 14 days. - 3.
Strain the mixture with a mesh strainer lined with dampened cheesecloth into a clean quart jar. Do not push on the solids to extract more liquid. - 4.
Stir in the simple syrup. - 5.
Seal and store in a cool, dark cabinet. Use within 1 year.
Prost!
Drink as you would Wild Turkey or any bourbon-based liquor.
