Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 2

The Friday Cocktail Hour: The Derby

Yes, it’s that time again—another eventful week has passed, and boy do we need a cocktail! Herewith, The Derby, a complex bourbon-lime sour, balanced with sweet vermouth and orange liqueur.

I’ve played with proportions here, adding a little more vermouth and orange to the bourbon. A half ounce of each is typically called for but having made this cocktail using those proportions, I find it too sour, in the same way I often find a side car and an aviation too sour. So, the fix was easy. Double the sweet components! The result is a much more pleasing, drinkable cocktail.

Video by Katherine Guanche

It’s so complex, in fact, that you’d be hard pressed to name the ingredients beyond the whiskey, so seamlessly do they blend.

It’s a bracing, complex cocktail, for bracing complex times: #Breonna #RBG. The “debate.” The President who flouted masks tests positive. Can we expect more? Brace yourselves!

My wife Ann appeared mid-morning to say she was frustrated that the novel she’s midway through lacks urgency, and really who cares? This is a critical question for any fiction writer, and the one asked during my first writing class by our professor, Reynolds Price. Of course, your mom is going to be interested in your story, he said, your friends, but what person who doesn’t know me will be interested? Why should a stranger care about this story?

Seasoned novelist though she is (her first appeared in 1988), I sympathized. The events of today, in the Year That Won’t Stop, how can any work of the imagination compete with the bizarre nature of what is looking more and more like America’s Armageddon. Sixty years ago, Philip Roth described the impossibility of fiction competing with fact. It’s hard to imagine any story competing with last seven months in America.

Yesterday, on a lovely fall afternoon on a Massachusetts beach, I finished Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (the 1998 novel which won the Pulitzer the following year and which I found on a shelf and had always wanted to read). In his acknowledgements, he thanks a book store in Manhattan’s West Village, where much of the novel takes placde. “Three Lives and Company,” he writes, “a bookstore owned and operated by Jill Dunbar and Jenny Feder, is a sanctuary and, to me, the center of the civilized universe. It has for some time been the most reliable place to go when I need to remember why novels are still worth the trouble they take to write.”

Or poetry for that matter—today’s is “Break” by Dorianne Laux.

Indeed, we will return to a civilized place one day, and may that wonderful bookstore, now owned by Toby Cox, be alive and well when the pandemic has passed. Until then, we do have cocktails.

Happy Friday all!

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The Derby


A bourbon cocktail, adapted by Ruhlman

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword bourbon cocktails, curacao, lime juice, sweet vermouth

Prep Time 3 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces bourbon1 ounce sweet vermouth1 ounce Curacao (or other orange liqueur)3/4 ounce lime juice1 mint sprig1 lime wedge or wheel
InstructionsCombine thee liquids in a glass. Add ice and stir. Strain into a chilled coupe or into a rocks glass fill with ice.Garnish with lime and mint. Pray for our country.

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Palmetto

FCH: The Palmetto

Happy Friday, all! Yes, it’s been another week and I’m back with a simple but little discussed, eminently worthy cocktail. As I’ve noted before regarding the Gimlet and the Daiquiri, the Negroni and Boulevardier, with most of the classic, classic cocktails changing the spirit can transform that cocktail into a unique cocktail all its own.

A different spirit requires a different name. We don’t call it a scotch Manhattan, we call it a Rob Roy. We don’t call it a rum Gimlet, we call it a Daiquiri. And we don’t call it a vodka Martini, because, as everyone knows, there’s no such thing as a vodka martini. We call that one a Kangaroo.

And a Manhattan made with rum is called … a Palmetto. It’s a lovely variation on the 2 parts spirit, 1 part sweet vermouth template, and with some aromatic (or orange or cherry bitters) it’s an engaging and complex drink, which I highly recommend. Note: while I prefer the traditional Manhattan ratio, the esteemed cocktail journalist Robert Simonson recommends equal parts rum and vermouth. You may, too. Taste and see for yourself.

I chose the Palmetto because our wonderful videographer and editor, Katherine Guanche, and her partner, director and sound engineer Sam Hood Adrain (I urge you follow his theater company What Will the Neighbors Say?), are leaving our idyll to return to their home in Bushwick, which happens to be on Palmetto Street. Thus this week’s choice.

After this complex, startling and in so many ways deeply sad week, I recommend, no I encourage, a second cocktail, followed by a home-cooked meal.

Here’s the video along with a reading of a poem by Major Jackson.

Here’s the video:

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The Palmetto


A Manhattan made with rum is an excellent cocktail.

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword Manhattan, rum, sweet vermouth

Prep Time 2 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces barrel aged rum1 ounce sweet vermouthbitters to tasteorange zest
InstructionsCombine the rum, vermouth, and bitters in a glass and chill with ice. Strain into a chilled coup or into a rocks glass with ice.Garnish with the orange zest

NotesOf course you could make this with Bacardi white rum, but it’s not worth the vermouth. Choose a rum grown dark from a barrel and this will be an excellent drink.
Note: the esteemed cocktail journalist Robert Simonson recommends equal parts rum and vermouth. You may too. Taste and see for yourself.

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Blind Melon

Video by Katherine Guanche.

Last week’s cocktail featured mint simple syrup. For today’s cocktail, I’ve made a fruit puree, canteloupe infused with rosemary, that stands in for the simple syrup. The subject came up during a pre-zoom interview for A Mighty Blaze with the novelist Caroline Leavitt and her producer Tom Champoux, who brought up the puree and sent me his recipe.

It caught our attention because the canteloupe where we’re staying is uncommonly delicious, the rosemary plentiful. It was simply a matter of combining a cup of diced canteloup, two sprigs of rosemary, and a half cup of sugar in a jar or bowl, shake or stir to mix it all up, then let it macerate in the fridge for two or three days. Blend and strain.

It’s a fun change from the standard sour. Notice this is essentially a daiquiri, with the puree instead of simple syrup. And you could mix up the herbs too. I imagine basil would be delicious as well, and you could make the same style sour pairing the basil infused cantaloupe with tequila and lime in the same proportions for an excellent drink. There’s really no end to what you can do.

Tom credited Boston’s Bully Boy Distillery for the drink, so thank you both!

This week’s reading is the opening stanzas of Richard Blanco’s “One Today,” a poem for President Obama’s second innauguration in 2013, chosen for it’s hopefulness and its acknowledgment that we are all of us together under one sun.

Together we stand, divided we fall. Happy Friday Cocktail Hour, one and all!

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Canteloupe-Rosemary Simple Syrup


An herbacious canteloupe puree for cocktails

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword canteloupe, rosemary

Prep Time 5 minutes

Servings 4




Ingredients1 cup canteloupe, large dice1/2 cup sugar2 branches rosemary
InstructionsCombine the ingredients in a mason jar or bowl. (If you wish, pull the rosemary leaves from the branches.) Shake or stir to combine.Refrigerate for 2 to 3 days. Puree in a blender, then strain. This should make about 6 ounces.

NotesThis should keep for about a week covered and refrigerated.





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The Blind Melon


A summery variation on the daiquiri, adapted from Bully Boy Distillery

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword canteloupe, Lime, rosemary, rum

Prep Time 3 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces light rum1 ounce lime juice1 ounce canteloupe-rosemary puree1 lime wheel or wedge
InstructionsCombine the all the ingredients but the lime wheel or wedge in a rocks glass, stir and fill with ice. Garnish with the lime.

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Mojito

All summer, resident videographer, Katherine Guanche, has been asking for a Mojito. Having grown up in Miami with Cuban-born parents, she naturally craves this venerable Cuban cocktail, tart sweet and refreshing.

I, on the other hand, waited, waited all summer to make her one, and so I did my best to perfect it. And with the New England weather on the verge of turning, and the honking of geese overhead preparing to migrate, I knew I shouldn’t wait another day. This one’s for you, Katherine!

One thing I didn’t know about the Mojito until looking into it, having only spent my time on the stool-side of the bar, is that the Mojito is not a favorite amongst bartenders. According to Wayne Curtis, writing at Liquor.com, “It takes too much time to make, it’s a pain to clean up and it’s ordered in quantities far too large by drinkers far too unadventurous.”

Nevertheless, Curtis says correctly, it’s a very, very good drink when thoughtfully constructed.

Toward that end, and to enhance the drink for our beloved Katherine, I made a mint simple syrup. Too often, the drink lacks enough minty flavor, or it’s got great mint flavor, but the mint has been pulverized to the point that my companions must discreetly mention that I have something caught between my teeth.

Having a mint simple syrup makes the drink quick to make as well, as it allows me to “muddle” the mint by smashing it with my fingers. (I made they syrup by combining 1 cup each water, sugar and mint—stems are ok to include but don’t have much flavor—in a pan, bring to a simmer, allow to cool, then strain.)

But mix as you wish: muddle the mint in a shaker and strain, muddle mint in a glass first, use sugar instead of simple syrup, increase or decrease the amount of rum. Whatever your druthers, a proper Mojito combines a light rum with fresh lime juice, sugar, and mint, and it’s topped with soda water. Make it and taste it! Is it the perfect balance of sweet, tart, rum and sparkle? Adjust as necessary. When we recorded the video, I wanted the rum to come through the seltzer more distinctively. And so I am recommending a 3 ounce pour, as opposed to the standard 2 ounces—because it’s Friday, goddammit, and it’s the end of summer, goddammit, and Katherine deserves it, goddammit, and we’re still in the pandmemic. GODDAMMIT!

The mojito is a great reminder of the interconnectedness of cocktails, for the Mojito is simply a Daiquiri with mint, on the rocks with a splash of soda. And on that note, you can also use the mint syrup for a splendid variation on the Daiquiri, which of course is simply a gimlet made with rum rather than gin! Daiquiri variations are fun as well, such as The Hemingway Dacquiri and the Maraschino Dacquiri.

Today’s poem is another from the lovely Mary Oliver, born yesterday in 1935 in Maple Heights, OH, a fifteen minute drive from where I grew up, in Shaker Heights. Here she is at the wonderful Brain Pickings, reading Wild Geese.

Happy Friday, everyone!

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The Mojito


The Cuban cocktail, rum, lime and mint, topped with soda.

Course CocktailCuisine CubanKeyword Cuba, Lime, mint, rum

Prep Time 2 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients8 mint leaves3 ounces light rum (2 is standard)1 ounce lime juice1 ounce mint simple syrup (see above for how to make; plain simple syrup is standard)1 sprig mint1 lime wheel
InstructionsCrush the mint between your fingers until they're fragrant and put them in a highball glass.Add the rum, lime juice and simple syrup.Fill the glass with ice, and top the glass off with soda water.Garnish with the sprig of mint and lime wheel.

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Beachcomber

Yes, it’s Friday again! Another week of the pandemic, another week of political convention, and it is time for a serious cocktail. Strong! Complex! Well-balanced! Delicious. And I herewith offer an uncommon cocktail, rum-based because I’m still at the beach: The Beachcomber.

I found it will reading about The Mai Tai in Justin Cristaldi’s Tiki Triangle, originally published in 1947. Rum, orange liqueur, lime juice, simple syrup, and the brilliant addition of one of my favorite liqueurs, Luxardo, a maraschino elixir.

While you may notice its resemblance to a margarita (it’s basically a margarita using rum, with the additional flare of Luxardo, it is unique in it’s own right and deserving of classic status. I can’t use one of favorite phrases, “instant classic”—apparently there are such things, but I don’t know how there can be such a thing—because according to Mr. Cristaldi, it was first on the menu at Trader Vic’s during its heyday when both Vic and Donn the Beachcomber were the rage, and rivals. Was it an attempt to cash in on Donn’s fame? Or did Donn create it only to have it filched, and published, by Trader Vic himself? Justin believes the latter, and as that involves a degree of intrigue, I favor that theory as well.

Proportions vary. Mine are these for The Beachcomber:

2 ounces light rum

3/4 ounce lime juice

3/4 ounce Curaçao (or Triple Sec)

1/2 ounce simple syrup*

1 capful or teaspoon of Luxardo

Garnish: mint and lime wedge

*If you listen to the video, I make a fumbling attempt to describe how to make mint simple syrup, which takes this cocktail over the top, but I find that the process is so simple (add mint to sugar and water that you’re bringing to a boil), that I merely sound stupid. Oh, well. Hope the poem makes up for that.

It’s from the 13th century poet-scholar Rumi (today a great spice company I highly recommend), who speaks of non-judgmentalism and transcendence, two things we direly need during these complicated times.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

Preferable with Beachcomber in hand.

Happy Friday one and all!

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The Beachcomber


A great rum cocktail, should be a classic!

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword rum, tiki drinks

Prep Time 3 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces light rum3/4 ounce lime juice3/4 ounce curacao1/2 ounce simple syrup (make a mint simple syrup, killer for this drink)1 teaspoon Luxardofresh mintlime wedge
InstructionsCombine the liquids. Add ice. Garnish with mint and lime!

The Perfect Gin and Tonic (Again)

Video by Katherine Guanche.

Katherine, Sam and I made this video in May looking forward to summer while in quarantine. Now it’s the middle of August, we’ve found a rental in a lovely, quiet, untrammeled patch of Massachusetts, on a river near a beach, and the Gin and Tonic with a wedge of lime has never tasted so good. Over a cribbage board on the porch or playing bocce in the yard in the low evening sun, the sparkling, bitter-sweet elixir soothes and refreshes. The real world approaches soon, but for now, these are Gin and Tonic days. And this video show how I try to perfect them.

Perfect a G&T? Put gin and tonic in a glass with ice and a wedge of lime, no? Even here there are nuances. It’s all about temperature and melting ice.

While I use the standard Beefeaters in the Video, my wife, Ann, splurged on a shipment of our absolute favorite G&T gin, Dingle gin, from that sweet little town on a southwestern peninsula of Ireland (I wrote about the place for Saveur, which made a great video to go with it), and Fever Tree tonic water, a most excellent tonic and now widely available.

I encourage variations. Last summer when we arrived in Dingle we were served a gin and tonic in a big goblet, with lime, orange, grapefruit and juniper berries. Fan-tastic.

Mix it up and enjoy the final days of summer! Happy Friday, all!

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Mai Tai

Video by Katherine Guanche

This may be one of the more bastardized cocktails served today, filled with syrups and fruit juices. As Tiki aficionados will tell you, though, a Mai Tai contains neither. And it’s one of the best cocktails out there.

At its base, a Mai Tai is a rum sour, a margarita using rum. That’s it—spirit, lime, orange liqueur. But! It is made complex and interesting by the combination of light and dark rums, as well as a hint of almond and mint. The better the rums, the better the cocktail, but frankly, there’s no reason you couldn’t use Meyer’s dark and Bacardi white rums and still have a fine cocktail.

As Justin Cristaldi says in his book Tiki Triangle, “What the Martini is to cocktail culture, the Mai Tai is to Tiki culture. It is by all means, the perfect cocktail.”

Having made several versions, I will quickly agree. Of all standard rum cocktails it is by far the most complex and interesting.

It was created at Trader Vic’s in the late 1940s, the Polynesian themed California bar, then became bastardized with fruit juices and syrups when it jumped to Hawaii. This bastardization (see for instance, the allrecipes version, the first recipe that comes up on my google search) led to inferior drinks and, I’m guessing, a lowering of the cultural clout of the Mai Tai. A great cocktail came to be thought of by many as a gimmick drink.

Not so. I urge one and all to give the Mai Tai a shot. Basic proportions: 1 ounce each dark and light rums, 1 ounce lime juice, 1/2 ounce curacao or other orange liqueur. A little orgeat syrup for the almond flavor, and perhaps a drop of simple syrup to balance the lime.

When I wrote to Justin to say I didn’t have any orgeat, he wrote back to say, “Try this, simple & better. 1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract, 3 oz sugar dissolved in 3 oz unsweetened almond milk (add extract last after it cools down). Trust me, it’s better than most of the junk out there.” I tried both and he’s right.

Herewith, Justin’s Mai Tai, from Tiki Triangle, and in the video, today’s poem Summer Night, by our country’s poet laureate, Joy Harjo.

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The Mai Tai


THE classic Tiki cocktail, should be a standard classic

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword Lime, mai tai, rum, Tiki, trader vic’s

Prep Time 3 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients1 ounce dark rum1 ounce light rum1 ounce lime juice1/2 ounce curacao1/4 ounce almond syrup (orgeat or homemade as above)1/4 ounce simple syrup1 lime wedge1 mint sprig
InstructionsCombine the fluids in a glass. Add ice and stir. Strain into an ice-filled glass. Garnish with lime and mint.

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Bee’s Knees!

Video by Katherine Guanche

Due to technical difficulties (sometimes referred to as vacation), I failed to post the Friday Cocktail on Friday! Better late than never I hope.

The Bee’s Knees is a prohibition era cocktail, by some accounts created as a way to mask the flavor of bathtub gin (which has always sounded kind of gross to me—perfect place to keep your gin and take care of that ring around the tub!)

But the cocktail itself is splendid, a classic sour, dormant since its heyday until contemporary mixologists picked it back up. I keep it to a golden sour ratio of 2 parts hooch, 1 part sour, 1 part sweet. Here the sour is lemon juice and the sweet is honey syrup (equal parts honey and water, heated to blend then cooled). As always, I recommend starting at a basic ratio, tasting and adjusting as necessary before chilling and pouring.

When Sam Hood Adrain, my sound technician and video director, heard there was a new distillery in our town of Providence, RI, where we’ve been sheltering since March 13th, the first distillery in the city since prohibition, he contacted The Industrious Spirits Company to learn more. The distillery uses only regional, non-GMO, organic grains to make vodka and gin (with the more time consuming whiskeys to come). They were scheduled to open to the public in April, alas. But you can still sample their spirits, available at the distillery or at various shops in Rhode Island. They happily provided a bottle to sample (thank you!).

It’s intensely herbaceous so I wouldn’t use this for a martini, but it works great in more complex cocktails such as a sour. They suggested a Bee’s Knees, and they were right! Welcome to Providence, ISco!

My reading today is from the eminent poet and teacher (at Washington U in St. Louis), whom I met at Bread Loaf. I was intrigued to find that, in looking for one of his poems that included bees, that an article on Medium actually addresses the poet’s use of horses and bees. In this poem, Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm (lovely title, that), notice how bees though not actually present, are evoked; I love how bees are used to signal rot. (An aubade is a poem appropriate to dawn or early morning, but I’m using it for the evening cocktail any way. I love the evocative, specific, sensual first stanza countering the mysterious abstract second stanza. Carl’s latest book is, Pale Colors In a Tall Field: Poems. Highly recommend. Support our poets!

Happy Friday everyone (even though I’m typing this on Sunday!)!

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The Bee’s Knees


A gin sour, sweetened with honey

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword Gin, honey, Lemon, sour

Prep Time 5 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces gin1 ounce lemon juice1 ounce honey syrup (1 part honey dissolved in 1 part water)1 lemon twist
InstructionsCombine the fluids. Taste and adjust to your liking. Add ice and chill. Strain into a chilled coup or over ice and garnish with a twist.

FCH: The Rosemary Gimlet

video by Katherine Guanche

Today’s Friday Cocktail Hour features a variation on a most excellent sour, thanks to the protean David Lebovitz, a poem by Matthew Dickman, how to make an infused simple syrup, and the three most important words in the English language and the Russian language. The video is by the excellent @katguanche and videographer @annabellmei218. Thank you all.

The gimlet is a classic sour and a reminder that innovative cocktails are moments away with the basic sour formula: 2 parts spirits, 1 part sour, 1 part sweet. The gimlet is gin, lime juice, simple syrup. A ginger lemon drop would be vodka, lemon juice, and ginger infused simple syrup. A margarita is a basic sour: 2 parts tequila and one part lime juice, one part orange liqueur (Cointreau or Triple Sec).

For a gimlet, do NOT use Rose’s Lime Juice, which someone in the 1980s told me was how you made a gimlet and thus made me wonder why a gimlet a cocktail at all. I don’t know what the hell Rose’s Lime Juice is, but ain’t juice that’s for sure.

Everything in this video is worthy of increased attention, not least of all the excellent poet Matthew Dickman (“The Mysterious Human Heart” is from his book All-American Poem), and read this amazing New Yorker profile on Matthew and his twin bother by @Rebeccamead_NYC, and perhaps most of all, the Three Most Important Words, which this country needs more than ever.

Cheers and happy Friday everyone!

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The Rosemary Gimlet
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A variation the classic gin and lime gimlet, via David Lebovitz

Course CocktailCuisine American, FrenchKeyword friday cocktail hour, Gimlet, Gin, rosemary, simple syrup

Prep Time 10 minutesCook Time 1 minute






Ingredients2 ounces gin1 ounce lime juice1 ounce rosemary simple syrup (see notes, or video, for instructions)1 lime wedge or disc for garnish
InstructionsCombine the liquidsChill with ice and strain into a chilled glass or rocks glass.

NotesTo make rosemary simple syrup: combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup chopped rosemary in a small sauce pan over high heat (the video says 1/2 cup, which will also work, but I use less). Bring it to a boil, stir and remove from the heat. Let it cool, then strain. this will keep refrigerated for 1 to 2 weeks.

FCH: The Rye Old-Fashioned

The last time I heard someone order an old-fashioned on screen was Don Draper on “Mad Men.” The last time I heard it ordered in person, it was by my step-son Sam, his cocktail request for his 27th birthday-in-quarantine. A birthday deserved a commensurate bourbon, one of our very favorites, Michter’s, which we’d recently picked up at Bin 312, a splendid wine and spirits shop here in Providence, RI.

Ordinarily, I’d have used a go-to bourbon, such as Maker’s Mark, reasoning that you shouldn’t put sugar and bitters, the only ingredients for this old cocktail, into truly fine whiskey. But Sam’s Old-Fashioned was superlative. And so for this Friday Cocktail Hour I went even further afield. We had just received a most generous gift from Joe Magliocco, president of Michter’s, who befriended my wife Ann after she wrote an essay on the bourbon for The Wall Street Journal. (I did the same column, and what did the WSJ send me? Pumpkin beer—blech—but they actually sent a decent one, so hope wasn’t lost.) Her essay (it wasn’t a review but spoke highly of the bourbon) so charmed the president of the company that he reached out to her, inviting us both to a tasting and lunch and we subsequently became friends.

And every now and then, when Michter’s releases something special, such as these limited run 10-year-old bourbons and ryes, we are the recipients of Joe’s generosity. So we tasted, fabulous as expected, and I decided to make an old-fashioned with his Rye, so deep and rich and close to bourbon, my preference, I thought it would make a great old-fashioned.

And oh, man was it. I now highly recommend using a fine spirit for this simplest of cocktails.

According to Robert Simonson, not in his book called The Old-Fashioned, but in his book, 3-Ingredient Cocktails, that this “three-ingredient granddaddy of the cocktail world,” got its name in the late 1800s. Decades earlier, the elixir was “whiskey, bitters, and sugar that was served in a footed wine glass and often downed as a morning drink.” Sounds like a good quarantine cocktail to me, but back in the early 1800s, alcoholic beverages were safer to drink than water which, in cities, could often come from contaminated wells.

But bartenders being bartenders ultimately started putting all kinds of crazy things in drinks in the search of the new. So 1890, if you didn’t want Chartreuse or Curaçao in your whiskey, you would ask for, he writes, “an Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.” It’s name eventually shortened to what it is today.

He notes that by the 1990s there were more Old-Fashioned variations on the cocktail than the tini craze in the 1990s.

So call me old-fashioned, and bring me a proper Old-Fashioned.

Today’s poem is by the estimable poet, Kevin Young, poetry editor of The New Yorker, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (a research division of the New York Public Library), and a swell guy I’ve met at a couple writer conferences. When you hear the name of the poem (under 60 seconds—all the poems I read here are fairly short), you will know why Kevin has my heart. (The splendid video was filmed by Annabelle Mei Adrain, and was made as ever by the talented Katherine Guanche–thanks Annabelle and Katherine!

Happy Friday, everyone, and wear those masks!

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The Old-Fashioned


A centuries-old cocktail that has never been better today.

Course CocktailCuisine AmericanKeyword bitters, Old-fashioned, sugar, Whiskey

Prep Time 2 minutes

Servings 1




Ingredients2 ounces good quality rye or bourbon1 teaspoon sugar (recipes often call for a sugar cube, which is about a teaspoon)3 dashes bitters (I use the all-purpose Angostura)1 orange twist (I didn't have an orange and so used lemon)
InstructionsCombine the sugar and bitters in an old-fashioned glass. I add a teaspoon or so to help dissolve the sugar. Pound it gently with a muddler or the end of a wooden citrus reamer.Add the bourbon, stir, add on large ice cube and garnish with a twist.