How I Craft Cocktails When My Pantry Starts Running Out Of Ingredients
We’ve all been there. Where guests show up unexpectedly and you dash up to your home bar to craft a cocktail or two. But your pantry, while at other times full of flavours and mixers, decides exactly at that moment to start running out of even the most basic ingredients essential for blending simple drinks!
Well, there was a moment not long ago when I was faced with a similar conundrum — two of the most essential cocktail staples, lime and soda had decided to elude me. Guests were right there, sitting in the drawing room, and when I went to my humble home bar to prepare a whisky sour, I began to get a little nervous. Limes, fresh and zesty, were nowhere to be found. Very well, I remember thinking, let’s just make a whisky highball. So I opened the refrigerator where the sodas are normally kept and that row on the side shelves stood unabashedly empty too! I was out of two major ingredients.
On that day, an important epiphany struck: running out of cocktail making ingredients is far from being the end of mixology. In fact, it can create room for a lot of inventive possibilities. This is because, on that evening, my ‘signature cocktail,’ a sweet lime or mosambi whisky sour took shape — made sweeter because of the lone fruit available in the pantry. Now, this cocktail remains a favoured blend: bringing together whisky, sweet lime and just a hint of honey, all the ingredients are given a dry shake with an egg white before shaking them again with ice.
After that initial experience, the process of working with whatever was available in the pantry became slightly more comfortable and smoother, even organised, I would venture to say. That’s because, there were a few methods which worked for me, while contending with a sparsely flavoured pantry:
The Art Of Substitution
As straightforward as this might sound, substitution is hardly an easy task. Replacing lime when you run out of it with any other souring agent cannot always be the key to making a well-balanced cocktail. Sometimes, limes can be replaced with orange juice or sweet lime, at others, it can be replaced with vinegar. This entirely depends on the cocktail being prepared and how well an acidic ingredient might work with it. Apple cider vinegar available in the fridge works fine in a gin-based cocktail but might become too savoury for a vodka cocktail complete with sweeter and fruitier flavours of cranberries or strawberries.
Tonic water is another ingredient which might run out because of frequent use. What I found useful was mixing whatever bubbly soda I had with a citrusy ingredient like lemon and a pinch of salt. And of course, sometimes simple syrup can be replaced with maple syrup or honey to lend fall cocktails like a spiced whisky smash a seasonal flourish.
Also Read: Small Batch, Big Flavours: How Distilling Craft Cocktails Develops Deep Tasting Notes
What’s At The Back Of The Pantry?
But beyond substitution, there’s more to the art of working with a limited number of cocktail ingredients. Sometimes, ingredients hidden at the back of the pantry like a jam or compote can come handy for making fruity cocktails laced with the caramelised flavours of rum.
One such drink that I fashioned out of dark rum and leftover fig jam was a fruity punch-inspired drink complete with the tart and rich notes of the spirit and the slightly sweet notes of fig jam muddled into the liquor. The drink was finished off with sparkling water and garnished with a lone mint leaf. Unexpectedly enough, running out of simple syrup on a certain occasion came handy because it enabled me to explore different forms of sweet flavours which added depth to the classic punch recipe.
Another time, I scanned the cocktail shelves differently to produce a drink out of vodka, ginger ale and a squeeze of lemon. What made the drink slightly more creative was adding chai concentrate made using the tea brewed just that evening. The drink became a bright yet deeply flavoured concoction, and a veritable winter favourite.
Evidently, cocktail making is more about functionality and flavour than about formula. There are multiple sweet, sour and bitter options out there but when one starts running out of the basics, creating interesting flavour combinations using whatever is available becomes a fascinating exercise — improvising cocktails to make well-balanced drinks in which unexpected ingredient combinations work together in perfect harmony.
Key Takeaways:
– We are all faced with that conundrum when guests show up unexpectedly and we run out of cocktail staples like lime and soda, essential for making basic blends.
– These are times which call for experimentation at the bar, substituting limes with a lone sweet lime or mosambi to craft a variation of the whisky sour.
– Going beyond substitution, another interesting hack is to look for ingredients hidden at the back of the pantry which can be put to inventive uses.
FAQs:
– What are a couple of ways in which a home host can craft cocktails when they run out of ingredients?
One way is to substitute whatever ingredients are absent with those which are available such as using sweet limes or oranges instead of lemons. Another is to look deeper into the pantry to find lesser-used ingredients for making inventive mixes.
– Can running out of ingredients make cocktail blending impossible?
Absolutely not. Running out of staples can make blending more complicated but hardly impossible. In fact, it creates more room for inventive possibilities in the kitchen.
– Which are a couple of these cocktails that can be concocted when one runs out of the usual staples?
Whisky sour variations which incorporate sweet lime and honey or a vodka smash containing a chai concentrate or even a rum punch made using a forgotten fig jam can be some of the cocktails to blend when one has run out of the staples.
*All cocktails listed use 30 ml liquor measurements for single serves. Drink Responsibly. This communication is for audiences above the age of 25.
