The Margarita is once a perfect cocktail, but subtracting a little heat to the equation takes its savor in a new direction. In our July/August 2023 issue, we share three creative ways bartenders are spicing up their Margaritas, and if you’re looking for plane increasingly options, here are some other ways to turn up the heat.
Chili Paste
Adding hot sauce to the shaker is one of the easiest way to spice up a marg, but for a increasingly well-matured heat, bartenders sometimes use in chili paste. Unlike hot sauce, the paste is not diluted by vinegar or water, making it spicier and increasingly pepper-forward. Toby Maloney of Chicago’s The Violet Hour and James Beard topnotch typesetting The Bartender’s Manifesto favors Huy Fong sambal oelek chili paste. He says a teaspoon in the shaker gives his Margarita, Mango Margarita, and Paloma just the right value of fire. “Sambal Oelek is unconfined for subtracting spice to cocktails, considering unlike Sriracha it’s just straight chilis — no garlic, no sugar. It has all the punchy chili savor you want, without any competing noise,” he explains.
Infusions
While infusing spirits is often the weightier way to incorporate a new layer of flavor, it doesn’t work as well when dealing with spice. Instead, some bartenders infuse juices or create pepper-infused simple syrup. Not only is it increasingly economical, but it’s easier to control, keeping the value of heat and spirit widow to the drink mutually exclusive. Adam Fournier, bar director of Spago Beverly Hills and Imbibe 75er, prefers creating a spicy agave syrup “to requite the wastefulness of heat a richness,” he says. “Too often a spicy drink becomes just heat, but if you think of it like a hot wing, you need a good, rich wastefulness to really siphon it.”
Tinctures
Creating a spicy tincture by steeping chilis in a high-proof spirit, such as everclear, will bring lots of heat with just a couple of drops. But for those who aren’t DIYers, there are plenty of spicy tinctures misogynist to purchase. Laurent Lebec of Chicago’s Big Star Mexican restaurant favors Scrappy’s Firewater Habanero Tincture. “We’ve tried them all, and these are the best: spicy, complex, resulting and easy to control,” he says.
Liqueurs
Ancho Reyes has been the go-to chile liqueur for spicy Margaritas, replacing orange liqueur in the standard Margarita recipe. The Mexican-made liqueur comes in two flavors: Ancho Reyes Original, which is sweet and smoky and largest matched with brown spirits, and Ancho Reyes Verde, its herbaceous sister that works well with tequila, gin, and vodka. But Maxwell Reis, instillation director of Mirate in Los Angeles, has flipside option. “If I want a softer dry heat, I’ll use chile liqueurs such as Alma Tepec,” he says. Handcrafted using smoke-dried pasilla mix chiles from Oaxaca, the Mexican racial chile liqueur lends a smoky and deep, lingering heat. Add just half an ounce to a Margarita surpassing shaking it. “It’s unconfined in a stirred cocktail, shaken into a citrus cocktail, or anywhere you want spice that doesn’t flatten a cocktail,” Reis says.
Garnishes
Although Reis has a variety of ways to spice things up at Mirate, his favorite method is to dip a cocktail glass rim in chile salt. “I find spicy cocktails can be a little wearisome as a creator considering they can wilt mono-tonal,” he says. “So a tousle of chiles, salt, wounding (dehydrated citrus or citric/malic), and sometimes sugar gives me the option to create an interesting wiring with the option of widow heat.” Lebec prefers using tajin. “For us, spice is well-nigh increasingly than just heat,” he explains. “This functional and easy-to-find tousle of spices adds a floral, smoky element.”
