I once put a great, fresh fruit Spanish G&T on a cocktail menu I developed and my GM made fun of me and told me a Gin and Tonic should never be served in a wine glass and that I didn't know what I was doing. It's good to be validated again years later.
@@rdjhardy Snob. Big red wine glasses works perfectly - we used to serve G&Ts in such at a fairly highly rated and expensive restaurant I worked for a few years back.
The Gin & Tonic is such a versatile drink with such high utility. It’s: simple, easy, not pretentious, approachable, sophisticated, and delicious. From college parties to James Bond, this drink pleases everyone with so few ingredients. Not only that it has a slight benefit, quinine in tonic is used malaria and babesoisis. So it has a unique health benefit too
That same tonic mixes well with a fruity red wine on ice (also from- south of - Spain, you're allowed to start sucking those spritzers down at 11am in the summer)
Chef, I work for Filibuster Distillery in Virginia. We make 3 gins. One is Rose petal, one is a Cardamom gin and the third is our Dual Cask gin. The Dual Cask botanicals are fresh Rosemary, Basil, and Lemon Verbena. It then spends 3 weeks in a bourbon barrel before bottling. All three are very balanced and delicious.
I've gone down the "clear ice" rabbit hole, and I'ma just say this: Once you go through all that work and finally get perfectly clear ice, you realize you no longer care
I've seen a couple of cocktail parties get way out of hand, folks (myself included) creating some truly diabolical concoctions as time went by and the blood/alcohol ratio shifted. If only we had this amount of understanding, class and restraint. More please!
I am not a person that likes to watch cooking shows but I love to click in and watch chef John's videos and him talking just made my day! Thank you for being such a delight! ❤
I love these. SO much. So very few and far between. I picture these days something like... Michele... "Aren't you putting a video out today?" Chef John... "Nah, I don't feel like it." Michele... "Get off your ass and get to work." Chef John... "You want me to work? Fine!" Chef John... (under his breath) F it. I'm drinkin. Then he films himself making his drink. Then we get a new Food Wishes. Love ya Chef John. To this day, I STILL make YOUR Whiskey Sour. And ONLY YOUR Whiskey Sour.
For perfect clear ice cubes: Fill a small, clean cooler (the type that fits a six pack of beer just nicely) 3/4 full with clean water Place this in your freezer for about 24 hours. Remove from freezer when a 2” (more or less, depending on your preference) layer of ice has formed on top. Loosen ice (thin knife, hot water, whatever) and invert over a sink so ice falls out. Carefully cut the ice into cubes on a cutting board. I use a serrated bread knife, and then crack the ice when I have a good groove in the ice. Sharp serrated knife + slippery wet block of ice = bad things could happen. Put the cubes into a freezer bag, then return to your freezer. Use anytime after the cubes are hard frozen. I tried many methods, and this is the only one I found that works. (My wife, Leora, actually found it, but I avoid giving her credit.) This method works because those impurities are basically the last things to set as the ice freezes. For anyone who has ever stood on a frozen creek, you have seen this. Cheers!
@@christinathompson1630 If I may also recommend a Gin to you. Brecon Special Reserve, a dirt cheap Gin from Wales. It's not a Dry or London Dry, though, so it's got lots of botanicals. It's a bit fruity and florally, and absolutely worth a try. I always keep a bottle handy, In case I have guests who haven't had it before. Very nice for the summer, goes well with cucumber and soda water. And if you're into space travel, add a dash of cherry bitters (Fee Brothers) per oz of Gin. Edit: Fixed typos and added the brand for the cherry bitters.
I've been making Spanish Gin & Tonics for a couple years now and its absolutely become one of my favorite cocktails and 100% my favorite summer Cocktail. That said, i do have some very specific preferences for when i make my G&T. Firstly, I prefer St. George Botanivore Gin. It balanced flavor blends nicely with the herbs in the drink without being too piney like you get with bombay or tangaray. Second, I only use a sprig of Rosemary. Its cheap and in CA, you can walk down almost any sidewalk and run into a bush. It pairs nicely without being overpowering or adding off flavor profiles. but you can use other herbs which you have a pallet for. For Citrus, i use a wedge of lime squeezed, a slice of lime, and a nice large slice of grapefruit Orange is good to but i find it can make things sweet depended on the variety. i think this drink benefits more from how floral and aromatic it is without being too sweet. Lastly, For Tonic, I prefer Fever Tree Original or Light, they're large enough that you can find them anywhere. Schweppes Classic is good to but know their Diet is horribly over sweet. But my favorite tonic to use is actually a Raley's / Bel-Air Brand Diet tonic. not to sweet, not too sour. nice balanced flavor without the extra carbs. The rest is as St John said.
What a beautiful drink! I love the idea of dressing up a gin and tonic, and so many possibilities present themselves. If you want to make an English gin and tonic, use lavender and a fresh bay leaf, Mexican, go with lime, a cinnamon stick and some cilantro. Theoretically, you could do the same thing with a julep base and vary the herbs and maybe even the base spirits accordingly.
I have a small cooler where I put in my chest-type freezer. I use warm water and put it inside the cooler directly, then onto the freezer. Comes out perfect every time.
No one should rank gin until they have had Old Raj. I sip that neat at room temperature...sometimes, I will share it, too, sometimes. Second, if juniper is your thing and we are here for gin cocktail, adding the berries days beforehand might interest you.
Missed two details dear Chef John: you swirl the ice cubes around with that spoon, to cool down the glass, then add the gin, and finally you slowly pour the tonic water down the spiral of that spoon into the glass. I personally enjoy sichuan peppercorns. Thanks for bringing this to the public, hopefully this trend will catch on around the world. It really makes a difference. Cheers!
Clear ice, not from boiling, but directional freezing. Some boil before doing the directional freeze, but the boiling is less important than the freezing process.
This is a beautiful drink, but I can confirm as a long time line cook, chef's gin and tonic is always Schweppes and cheapest gin 1/1 with the last ice in the building
There's a couple of tricks for clear ice but for the most part it's about making the water freeze slowly. One trick that my brother in law uses is to pack your ice tray in a small cooler then put that in the freezer. The cooler slows the freezing down so gas bubbles don't freeze in the ice and you get big crystals.
for the clear ice you need to use distilled water, where you boil it and the steam is forced through a tube where it condenses back to water in another container and that is what you use
You really need to try a Plymouth (UK) Gin and Tonic. Small wine glass filled to the top (so you can see the meniscus) - no ice, no tonic, no adornment at all. It sounds so wrong, but is an ideal aperetif before lunch .
Juniper is the reason I don't drink gin. My MIL loved gin though. Whenever she traveled, she always brought a couple bottles of it along. I'm sure she would have loved this recipe! She loved cooking & collecting recipes.
As water freezes dissolved solids and gasses are forced out of solution. They become trapped in the ice causing cloudiness. Clear ice is achieved through directional freezing. Cut the top off of a smooth sided plastic water bottle. Place the bottle in an insulated drink cozy, and pour in water to about ¾ full. Place it in the freezer. The water will freeze from the top down and be clear. If it freezes completely you'll need to cut off the bottom, which won't be clear.
@@mitchyoung93 I do that too, but the cup in a cozy method can produce a cylinder of ice that is perfect for in a double rocks glass. If you catch it before it freezes all the way, minimal cutting.
I don't know John. Your margarita recipe beats this fancy G/T- I know in my heart of hearts. I shake all my tiki drinks for 60 seconds now! What John doesn't tell you is that this cocktail costs 50 euro in spain and they have to dress it up to suppress the outrage
to get clear ice is actually difficult because you want the water to freeze very slowly without any movement, boiling it doesn't do anything but kill pathogens and remove oxygen from the water.
Clear ice is made when ice crystals have no boundaries bumping into one another. This is accomplished by having the ice freeze in a single direction by applying refrigeration to the bottom of the water as opposed to the top the way water typically freezes on a lake or in your freezer. Replicating this effect at home is a bit tricky and boiling the water before isn’t going to do much of anything except maybe get some gasses out of it… in fact if you put hot water in the freezer you may get even more unclear ice because of how many crystal grain boundaries form.
You're correct in the method, however it actually has more to do with the purity of the water and having even the slightest amount of contaminate will cause the ice to crystalize with imperfections (white). Clear ice will naturally form with perfectly pure water because the ice naturally forms a specific lattice structure with the least amount of energy required to do so. Contaminates force the crystal lattice to form irregularities and cause your imperfections. To your point, boiling makes things worse but that is because; as the water evaporates out, it leaves behind the contaminates increasing its ratio to water and decreasing the waters actual purity. Ideally and the easiest way is to use pure deionized water. Not "Pure", not distilled, not filtered. Deionized Water. All those other words are marketing terms that mean nothing in terms of the water's actual purity.. most people wont have access to this as its typically sold for laboratories. It's not regulated but more expensive than any water should be. Though ive been told some Walmarts actually sell it.. Differential cooling is another good alternative. Differential cooling allows ice to form from one direction. as pure water is frozen first (requires less energy), it then pushes all contaminates to the center of the ice or, for differential cooling, to one side of the cube. (this is why all ice cubes have clear edges and white in the center). A very easy way to do this is to make your ice in a large mold where the top remains insulated. Allow the ice to freeze 50% of the way then punch a hole in the top and pour out the water. refill with water and repeat once more. your ice will be 90% clear with the smallest white artifact. Alternatively they have clear ice kits they sell on amazon which is probably the easiest method.
@@cr0ss0ut I’d think the higher rate of cooling by evaporation from a steaming pool of ice would cause the formation of more seed nuclei. Just getting a pot of water boiling for a couple minutes isn’t going to concentrate contaminants that much
They say use clear ice cubes because they last longer. That's great and all but I find that the more delicious a drink, the faster it's gone, leaving you with clear ice cubes that far outlast the beverage, so there's that. 😂😉😎
