Drink recipes are subjective. Experimentation is a lot of fun, and quite frankly encouraged. However, you really should know what the fuck you're doing before you go all willy nilly throwing everything in your kitchen into a glass and calling it a cocktail. This is the classic Mojito. It's damn fine on it's own. In fact, this is the only way I drink them. Once you've mastered this technique, feel free to experiment with other stuff like mangoes or pineapple or whatever. Just, please, don't call your franken-drink a Mojito.
Yield 1 drink
- 8-12 fresh mint leaves
- 1/2 fresh lime, cut into four wedges
- 1 tablespoon raw sugar. Simple syrup is NOT acceptable here
- Light rum (see notes on rum below)
- Club Soda
- Ice
- 15oz Highball Glass
- Muddler
- Bar spoon (a long wide bladed butterknife will do in a pinch)
- Lightly drop the mint leaves into the glass
- Sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar on top of the mint leaves
- Drop the four lime wedges in on top of the sugar and mint
- Gently muddle until the sugar is dissolved. Let's pause here for a PSA
Muddling is not grinding the piss out of whatever you're muddling until its a
pulpy pile of goo! When preparing this drink, muddling is science, as is the
order of assembly. Raw sugar is used because of it's large granules which do a
nice job of piercing the mint leaves, thus extracting the delicious minty oils
from the leaf. This is why the sugar goes on top of the mint, and the limes on
top of that. Lime juice is 91% water. When you *gently* muddle the limes into
the mint and sugar, you are doing two important things: extracting the oil from
the mint and pushing the water out of the lime. Sugar dissolves in water. Sugar
does not dissolve in alcohol. (If you ever see a recipe telling you to muddle
bitters or something with sugar, it's wrong, and you'll have a grainy drink.)
Finally, by having the mint on the bottom, you're not shredding it into a bunch
tiny pieces that will be stuck in your teeth later. This does not require brute
force, it requires patience and delicacy. </rant>
- Pack your glass with ice. Like, to the top. Literally pack it with the palm of your hand, please.
- Add rum. Fill the glass about 3/4 full. It's probably about 5oz of rum.
- Top with soda water - about another 2oz or so.
- Stick the spoon all the way to the bottom, and stir. Don't stir like you're spinning all the ice around in a circular motion, but stir it in a straight back and forth motion. This will force all that muddled goodness up into the rest of the drink. Don't shake a mojito and don't pour it back and forth. It makes the soda go flat, and pushes mint and lime pulp up into the ice where it with then annoy you by being stuck in your teeth when you sip the drink.
- For bonus points, add a stick of fresh sugar cane as a garnish. They're fun to chew on after they've soaked in the rum for a while.
This drink is sometimes referred to in jest as Cuban Gatorade. You want to use a light rum, and a not so fancy one at that. These things are great on a hot sunny day, and if you go messing around with darker rums, the drink will be too heavy instead of the crisp, refreshing nectar that it is intended to be. Most of the time when I'm pounding these things for a week straight on vacation somewhere I go with Bacardi. It comes in big bottles, and is cheap. The flavor is light, and doesn't interfere with the drink too much. If it's not an all day slug fest I prefer either Mount Gay Light or Appleton Estate light. All of these rums are made from molasses. They are light bodied, with a hint of cane sugar flavor. There are rums out there that are made from real cane sugar. I fucking love them. I will not however use them for Mojitos. They're too expensive first of all, and secondly, they're thicker bodied, and so produce a thicker, more syrupy drink.
Cheers!