Mezcal Margarita
Using a fresh homemade sour mix and a pinch of salt creates a mezcal margarita with smooth, deep flavors that will make you feel like you’re lounging on a tropical beach.
Distilled from the heart of the agave plant and roasted inside earthen pits provide mezcal with the complex flavors and smokiness needed to create the perfect backdrop for a smooth drinking margarita that finishes with a hint of salt.
What Makes this Margarita So Delicious
There are a couple of things that make this one of our all-time favorite margarita recipes.
The first is adding a pinch of salt to the cocktail shaker. Adding salt to the shaker instead of the rim distributes the salt throughout the cocktail, making sure you get a little bit of salt in every sip. This makes the margarita taste better and is a lot easier than trying to salt the rim of your glass.
Another is the complex lemon flavors and texture that come from using a sour mix made with freshly squeezed lemons. We also love how shaking the cocktail hard enough to bruise the ice sows tiny ice crystals everywhere, giving the margarita a texture that adds to its uniqueness.
Margarita Making Tips
Here are a couple of tips when you’re mixing up margaritas or any other mezcal cocktail. Get a good mezcal with a subtle smokey flavor, which means it doesn’t come in a plastic bottle, and you can’t find it on the bottom shelf. This cocktail is all about the joy of what happens when a few good ingredients come together.
The reason we like serving these over a big chunk of ice is it takes longer for big ice cubes to melt, which keeps everything cold longer without watering the drinks down. Here’s our favorite tool for making big ice cubes at home.
A few other margaritas we love are Margaritas with Freshly Squeezed Lime Juice and Strawberry Habanero Margaritas.
Instructions
- Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour in the mezcal, triple sec, sour mix, and a pinch of salt.2 oz sour mix, 1 1/2 oz mezcal, 1/2 oz triple sec, pinch salt
- Put the top on the shaker and shake it like you mean it. Preferably to some good music. The idea here is to bruise the ice, so the final drink has little shards of ice floating in it, adding thickness and texture.
- Serve by straining the margarita over a big ice cube and top with a lemon wheel for extended margarita pleasure.
Notes
Recommended Equipment
Mark is an experienced food writer, recipe developer, and photographer who is also Umami’s publisher and CEO. A passionate cook who loves to cook for friends, he can often be found in the kitchen or by the grill testing new recipes.
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