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jalapeno peppers

Cocktail Pantry Twists: Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly Margarita

December 4, 2019 by elana Leave a Comment

Hot Pepper Cranberry Margarita // stirandstrain.comThe Cocktail Pantry Twists Series is made in partnership with Stonewall Kitchen. Recipe and ideas are my own.

Hello and welcome to my pantry. Yes, my actual pantry.

In these cold weather months, sometimes it’s hard to come across some fresh ingredients to make drinks with. Or the ones we find at the store are flying here from thousands of miles away and, well, come with a hefty price tag too. So to beat those winter blues, we’ve teamed up with Stonewall Kitchen, who have been gracing my shelves for years (Like almost two decades now. I. AM. OLD.), to add some great flavors to our drinks with their assortment of jams and condiments.

Hot Pepper Cranberry Margarita // stirandstrain.comI’ll be taking over their Instagram Stories on Friday the 6th to share some how-to videos and be a talking head, but you all get the recipes here first! And there’s three this week! Also, I’ll be having a giveaway Friday as well on my IG page and you’ll have a chance to win ALL the products to make the recipes with. It’s like getting a holiday basket delivered to your door except better because you’ll be able to make cocktails with everything inside.

First up in the series of cocktail pantry twists is a Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly Margarita made with Stonewall Kitchen’s Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly. It’s holiday time and I love the sweet-tart cranberries that are a ubiquitous part of the season. And I love a Spicy Marg too. This cocktail mixes up blanco tequila with a sweet, spicy, and sour flavor profile. It’s bursting with delicious ingredients and I think it’s just the drink to kick up our taste buds when we are craving those juicy fruit flavors.

Hot Pepper Cranberry Margarita // stirandstrain.comNow, since your grocery store may or may not have citrus (even though winter is when citrus is in season!), and we’re all hanging out together in my pantry, I’ve got a few substitutions for fresh lime juice below. Now some might seem a bit out there, but this is also keeping in mind that you’re using cranberries in this Margarita and they have their own sourness, so you can mellow the citrus out a bit and use something like orange juice.

Hot Pepper Cranberry Margarita // stirandstrain.com

No limes? Try these alternatives:

  • Meyer Lemons
  • Orange Juice
  • Organic, all natural bottled lime juice
  • Lemonade

Hot Pepper Cranberry Margarita // stirandstrain.comHot Pepper Cranberry Jelly Margarita

  • 1-1/2 ounces blanco tequila
  • 1 tablespoon Stonewall Kitchen Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly
  • 3/4 ounce orange liqueur
  • 1/2 freshly squeezed lime juice (or a substitution from the list above)
  • kosher salt for rim

First, take a lime wedge and wet the edge of a rocks glass, and then roll the outer edge of the glass in the salt. Set aside. In a shaker 2/3 filled with ice, pour in the tequila, the Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly, orange liqueur, and the lime juice. Shake hard 20 seconds and then strain into the rocks glass. Garnish with a small spoon topped with additional Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly. Enjoy!

See you tomorrow for the next recipe in our series!

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: blanco tequila, Cocktail Pantry Twists, cranberry, Fall, jalapeno peppers, lime, margarita, Stonewall Kitchen, tequila, winter

Spicy Watermelon Margaritas for Two and a homemade citrus salt recipe

July 24, 2019 by elana 1 Comment

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comThis post was made in partnership with Tequila Cazadores. Recipes and ideas are my own.

If berries are my favorite summer fruit, watermelons are a close second. If only they weren’t such a pain to break down! And all those seeds, ugh! But I think today I’ve found a much better work around, and it includes Margaritas… so of course I’m excited.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comWe’ve all seen those wacky watermelon kegs (ahem, I may have even enticed you to buy one on this site before too), but what if you want the watermelon experience and there’s only two of you? Get yourself a mini seedless watermelon and hollow half of it. Boom! It’s like a very convenient and way less expensive tiki bowl. Then you can use the insides of the watermelon flesh to make Spicy Watermelon Margaritas… for two of you. You don’t need to remove any seeds or even cut it into pieces. And that very recipe we have down below.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comYou know what’s also exciting? It’s National Tequila Day! Today, and maybe National Margarita Day, might be some of my very favorite drink holidays. I mean, I’m not waiting to have a Spicy Marg on just these occasions, but the reminder sure doesn’t hurt. I’ll be celebrating today with Tequila Cazadores Blanco whose 100% blue agave with its clean, smooth taste ensures that I will have the most delicious drink.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comAnd to ensure my friends also will have something delicious to drink today, I’m sending out a few tequila bags via special delivery…which would be me in my car. If you head on over to my Instagram page today you can see those bags in action, literally (go see what I mean!). In the bags I’m including some handmade citrus salt that would be so perfect with this drink if you don’t decide to use a watermelon as a drinking vessel, although I highly encourage it.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comOk! Let’s go break open some watermelons!

Spicy Watermelon Margaritas for Two

1/2 mini seedless watermelon, flesh removed and set aside
4 ounces Tequila Cazadores Blanco
2 ounces freshly pressed watermelon juice
4 chunks watermelon
1-1/2 ounces orange liqueur
1-1/2 ounces freshly squeezed lime juice
pinch of salt
3-4 slices of jalapeño
mint and lime slices for garnish

In a shaker filled with crushed ice, pour in Tequila Cazadores Blanco, watermelon juice, watermelon chunks, orange liqueur, lime juice, salt, and jalapeño slices. Shake hard 30 seconds and pour  unstrained into the hollowed out watermelon. Add more crushed ice if necessary. Garnish with mint and lime slices. Any maybe a few tiny umbrellas. Enjoy National Tequila Day!

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.comCitrus Salt

3-4 dried citrus wheels*
3 tablespoons kosher salt

Grind the citrus wheels in a spice or coffee grinder until fine. Run through a coarse mesh strainer to remove any larger white pith parts. Combine salt and ground citrus in an airtight container. Store in a cool, dry place.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita for Two // stirandstrain.com*If you’d like to see how to make dehydrated citrus wheels, check out our DIY Story on our Instagram page!

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: Cazadores Blanco, jalapeno peppers, margarita, tequila, watermelon

Jalapeño Margarita

February 22, 2019 by elana 1 Comment

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

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: agave, Cazadores Blanco, drink holiday, jalapeno peppers, lime, margarita, NationalMargaritaDay, shaken, tequila, triple sec, winter

The Pisco Kid And another new egg white substitute for cocktails!

November 7, 2016 by elana 1 Comment

The Pisco Kid Cocktail // stirandstrain.comIf you’re visiting Los Angeles, or happen to already be a resident, and want to find a bar with a decent jukebox, I have a few I can recommend. There’s my beloved Tonga Hut in the Valley, The HMS Bounty in Koreatown, and then there’s Footsie’s over in Highland Park. I’m sure there are some more bars out there that have a great jukebox selection but these are my go-to’s. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments.

The Pisco Kid Cocktail // stirandstrain.comI always have my favorite songs and will seriously put on $20 worth of music; alright, alright, I’m a total jukebox hog. Footsie’s in particular I always start with the Cisco Kid by War. I have no idea why, I just like to start my set off with that. I heard that song out of the blue the other day and have been reminiscing about jukebox playlists ever since. That song is also probably why I’ve created this cocktail.

The Pisco Kid Cocktail // stirandstrain.comYou’ve read on here before my thoughts on pisco- it’s a versatile mixing spirit that I don’t think gets enough credit. I’ve also used the base recipe for a pisco sour to show you how you can use BEER! as an egg white replacement. Today I’m riffing on that theme again, making a cocktail that calls for egg whites without eggs. But this time we’ve got a fun new ingredient to play with: Instafoam!

The Pisco Kid Cocktail // stirandstrain.comYou might not be a vegan but you might be someone who cringes at the thought of an egg white in a cocktail. Even though most bars are either using pasteurized egg whites or eggs from their own back yard chickens (I’m sure that’s a thing) to prevent salmonella from entering your cocktail. Still, I get it, you don’t want to drink the egg whites. So now you can give Instafoam a try. But won’t it just make the cocktail taste all chemically? NO! I know way back in the dark days when there was only Fee Foam you were going to get a weird aftertaste (and I’m not knocking on Fee Brothers, they were a beacon of bitters in a world that didn’t understand the need yet.) but here you just taste the cocktail.

So now you’ve got THREE replacements for egg whites in cocktails to either make your drink vegan, or just to avoid raw eggs: beer, aquafaba and Instafoam. OK, now onto the actual cocktail recipe.

The Pisco Kid Cocktail // stirandstrain.comYes, this is a riff on pisco sour cocktail. We’ve got the usual culprits: pisco, lime juice, simple syrup, bitters. However, we’ve spiced it up a bit with the addition of jalapeño jam. I often add marmalade or something of the sort to a whiskey sour just to give it an extra layer of flavor. Here it does the same with a spicy, slightly sweet bite with just a bit of earthy aftertaste from those peppers.

Note: if your jam is more on the solid side, you’ll want to break it up first in the shaker with a muddler to hasten the shaking time and to make sure it gets well incorporated into the drink.

2 dashes Instafoam
2 ounces pisco, Encanto used here
1 ounce lime juice
1 tablespoon jalapeño jam
1/2 ounce simple syrup
3-4 dashes of Angostura Bitters

In the bottom of a shaker, add your Instafoam first. Then pour in pisco, lime juice, jalapeño jam (see note above) and simple syrup. Fill ice 2/3 up shaker. Shake hard for about 20 seconds and strain into a rocks glass. Top with a few dashes of Angostura Bitters.

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: angostura, encanto pisco, Instafoam, jalapeno peppers, lime, pisco, simple syrup, vegan

Satan’s Breath

March 9, 2013 by elana 1 Comment

satans-breath-1At some point in the last 10 years I’ve developed a tolerance for heat in my food. I’m a sucker for foods that make me cry just a little. Those that I’ll sweat over but clean my plate (hello Thai food!). And the other day I realized maybe a cocktail could be just as satisfying with the right amount of heat. Also, I had picked up a sampler pack of The Bitter End Cocktail Bitters and I have been looking for a cocktail to use them in. I had sampled the Memphis bitters at Bar Keeper here in LA and with just one drop my mouth was on fire. Awesome.

My Tres Palmas cocktail includes some jalapeños, but they sit way in the back and don’t come out to mingle very much. What I really wanted was a cocktail that breathed fire.satans-breath-2

This particular cocktail took much more trial and error than I was expecting but I was determined to get the right balance of sweet and heat. The first batch I made with Gin and most of a chili pepper thrown in. It resulted in something akin to drinking MACE. Second round I subbed out the gin with añejo tequila, a much richer flavor, but still almost undrinkable due to the amount of pepper I had opted to keep in. There was also a missing element and I turned to the kumquats dying a slow death on my counter. That bite of citrus and a bit less hot pepper and I’d hit it out of the park.satans-breath-3

Be forewarned! As this drink sits it steeps and the heat develops more. So if you want to lessen that, use less jalapeño with no seeds, or just drink it very quickly. Your choice.

1-1/2 oz Don Julio Añejo Tequila
1-1/2 oz Cynar
2 slices of fresh jalapeno
2 whole kumquats sliced in half, seeds removed
1 hefty drop of The Bitter End Thai Cocktail Bitters

Muddle jalapeño and kumquats together in a mixing glass. Add the rest of the ingredients and fill the shaker 2/3 with ice. Shake and double strain into a chilled cocktail coupe.

Sweet heat is a lovely way to describe this cocktail. The nose is all citrus with a touch of bittersweet from the Cynar. That sweetness continues through the first sip where the heat immediately kicks you in the back of the throat but then softens with a rich smokiness from the Añejo. Tequila and Cynar blend well making this cocktail seem less like ‘tequila’ and more towards something brown and bitter, with only subtle tequila hints. Besides heat, the jalapenos also provide a grassiness that makes the whole cocktail more of a bittersweet flavor overall.

Sweet, smoky, fire. What I think a devil’s breath would be like. Enjoy at your own risk!

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: cynar, Don Julio Añejo Tequila, jalapeno peppers, kumquat, thai bitters

The Tres Palmas

July 4, 2012 by elana 4 Comments

Recently we spent a relaxing couple of days out in the wonderfully hot Palm Springs, it was for my birthday, but really, everyone needed some time to veg out. My husband is not a big fan of heat, sun, or swimming pools so he volunteered to be the cook and cocktail maker and give me a break (in the cocktail area, he’s still cook around the house). This meant he could stay indoors in air conditioning and not let on how much he was sampling the drinks; not like I can judge.

So there was lots of nachos and guacamole and the like, requiring lots of cilantro and hot pepper scraps to end up laying about doing nothing. In a moment of brilliance the husband tosses some of these scraps into a tumbler of gin and grapefruit juice topped with champagne and hands it to me upon request for a drink to have on my raft. Now, he tried to convince me that he’s had similar drinks before, but I hadn’t. So as far as I was concerned this was a groundbreaking flavor combination, possibly due to the extreme heat and sun exposure and the several morning cocktails we’d already had (read: vacation drinking).

Since we’ve been back I’ve been wanting to make this again, only I had some ideas to tweak it a bit. I finally got around to doing it and with a couple modifications, I was able to encapsulate exactly what I thought the drink should be.

First thing I did was try it with the champagne, and then again without. In the end the float of champagne wasn’t helping anyone so I tossed that out of the recipe. Second, I added some lime in for balance. Then, I decided it needed salt. I have no idea where this desire to constantly dump salt on everything is coming from. I seriously should just carry around a salt lick so I stop ruining perfectly good meals. However, I had some fancy smoked salt flakes from Maldon that did the trick.

Tres Palmas was the name of the house we stayed at (it belonged to Jack Lalanne at some point in his life); I thought it a fitting name for the drink.

2 oz Gin (Beefeater was used here)
3 oz Grapefruit Juice (we had fresh squeezed in a bottle when we were on the trip so I used the same here. Feel free to sub in your own freshly squeezed by hand)
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
4 Jalapeno rings
1/2 lime wedge

Garnish:
slice of lime
Maldon smoked salt flakes

Start with the salt rim. Use your lime garnish to coat a quarter section of the glass. Roll the outside edge in the salt, pressing hard to crack the larger flakes. Set aside. In a mixing glass, combine all other ingredients and shake vigorously with your metal tumbler (so rare I use the Boston Shaker on here). Pour unstrained into the rocks glass. Finish with the lime wedge garnish.

The drink has a nice balance of citrus that compliments the gin. However the cilantro leaves add unexpected flavor, in a good way, and the heat of the jalapenos gives it great punch. I love the nice bits of cilantro and jalapeno floating around in the drink. They’re awesome little flavor bites. And the smoked salt is just another unexpected layer to the drink that imparts a subtle smokiness, that, in all honesty, reminds me of a lovely salsa.

Note: Jalapenos can vary greatly in hotness and you should really decide how spicy you want to make this. One recipe I made I left the seeds in, and though it was VERY spicy (the way I like it), it was obnoxious to drink having all these small seeds. I’d suggest that if you want heat, leave a few of the seeds in. If you want less heat, scrape the seeds out altogether. No use making something you can’t drink.

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: cilantro, gin, Grapefruit, jalapeno peppers, lime, summer

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