Grenadine.
A while back, you may remember we made some apple-pomegranate Grenadine back in our Jack Rose episode. We didn't go into how we did it, but we promised one day we'd show you, and now that day is here.
Grenadine is a mixology staple, and while it doesn't always make an appearance every night, the revelry can be brought to an abrupt halt if the need for it arises and it is naught to be fount. So in to the end of making you a better mixologist, we show you how to have the real stuff ready to go.
You may have noticed that our background image took a bit of a punch to the face... yeah it did. If you would like to sponsor a new one, send us $1, because we buy these things at the 99cent store.
Also, you may notice we have a miniscule amount of pomegranate juice, and that's because we already made a large amount of this earlier and never documented it, so we don't need to make much at this point. The amount that this portion yields is enough for between 8 and 12 drinks, depending on how you like it.
You will need:
Pomegranate Juice: From concentrate is completely ok, but avoid anything that is a combination of juices like pear, grape, apple, etc. We're making grenadine here not... something that's not grenadine. And stay the hell away from anything with preservatives in it, because we'll be heating this stuff and they get nasty when that happens.
Sugar: Equal in weight to the amount of pomegranate juice, until you get up to about a liter, then you can back it off a bit to like 60-75%. Traditional recipes call for molasses, so you could use brown sugar, but that does effect the overall color, and since grenadine is so often used as a visual, we are opting to keep it as red as we can, so we'll be using cheap-o store brand bleached sugar for this. Seriously, you end up with brown grenadine and that Tequila Sunrise is gonna end up looking more like Montezuma's Revenge.
Salt: You don't need a lot of this. Something like 0.5 grams per 500ml of juice. But a tiny pinch of salt really enhances the flavor.
Saucepan: Do not use something like a skillet or some super-wide surface area thing. You'll scald the juice, scorch the sugar, and spill everything everywhere. Just use a saucepan.
Lemon/Lime: Add this towards the end of the simmering. Sometimes pomegranate juice actually has citric acid added to it already, so you may feel you don't need it and that's fine. But it's good to have half a lemon or lime for every 250ml of juice.
"Reducing" and "boiling" are often thought of as equals in the kitchen, but in reality, to reduce a solution by removing water, you could just as easily use rapidly moving dry air that is room temperature and a lot of surface area. Since we don't have that, we'll be using heat, but just like the taste of a cooked tomato is quite different from an uncooked one, the same thing applies to just about all fruits and pomegranate is no exception. So do remember that A) it's going to be thick enough thanks to the sugar, and B) in 15 minutes plenty of water will find its way out of the thing even on the lowest simmer.
Find the Yankee Rose here.
It really is just that simple. There's no excuse to not have this good stuff around. Remember, commercial products like Rose's "grenadine" don't even list pomegranate on the label. It's full of high fructose corn syrup and red dye. Besides being disgusting, Rose's Grenadine just kills a cocktail dead faster than Carrie Nation because it's just HFCS and food coloring.
Our home-made version is a great way to sweeten a up summer iced tea, or even add to cupcake icing for a little bit of fruity tang. It's even a great alternative flavoring for milk, when the kids want strawberry Nesquick and you're all out (or you just don't feel like giving your children something with:
SUGAR, WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LESS THAN 2% OF MALIC ACID, PROPYLENE GLYCOL ALGINATE, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVE), XANTHAN GUM, RED 40, SALT, BLUE 1)...
That's seriously what's in Nesquick according to their own website... not much of that is in what we just made, now don't you just feel better about yourself?
Next up, we put our grenadine to good use with:
The Shirley Temple
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