Red Dead Redemption: A Morning-After Cocktail

OK we're back.  We really needed a break.  Our contributors moved away, and  after going full-throttle on our postings since January, ending up in the ER, getting jerked around in the job market, having to do a bunch of government things, and forcing normalcy to return, we're back on schedule.

There will be a few schedule changes.  Our content scheduled for early April will be released in late May, and so we're just going to go with late April and move into May with what we had planned.  We would like to thank you all for bearing with us.

Now, on with the show:

Red Dead Redemption.

A variation on our Bloody Derby, we've created Red Dead Redemption to help you through those mornings (or afternoons) of ringing ears, aching heads, heaving stomachs, and the ever burning question of why did I do that?  You know you've been through one of those, and you'll be having a few more before that intervention your friends are gonna give you when this season of Game of Thrones is over.  

Red Dead Redemption is named after the exact video game you're thinking of, and so we're going to be keeping bits of wild west in this as much as we can. We're also sending it over to everyone's fave net-a-tacious cocktail blog The Drunken Moogle, since this is something that seems up their alley.  We actually wish we could send them more recipes, but it's hard to figure out a way to connect Kill la Kill to a fucking Pimm's Cup or whatever the hell.






What you will need:
Tomato Juice: This one should be obvious.  Or you can use whatever similar thing you like in your bloodies ...you wanna go Clamato?  Fine go nuts.
Bloody Mix:  A few grinds of black pepper, apple cider vinegar, chili powder/chili paste, liquid smoke, wasabi in a tube (it's really just horseradish) and Worcestershire (anything without High Fructose Corn Syrup is ok, and we prefer French's because L&P is a little too unfriendly on the pallet in the quantities we're going to be using... and since we're not working at the moment we're now cheap bastards).
Whiskey:  To keep in the spirit of Red Dead Redemption you might be tempted to track down some gut-rotting Redeye, but let's remember you're trying to actually improve your situation, so a nice bourbon is where we land.  
Extras:  You'll need half a softened/pickled jalapeño sliced up, or (if you've been very naughty) a habanero.  The more timid should go with a poblano pepper. You can also skip this step and just add a bit of your favorite hot sauce just before you shake this up.  Remember this is not about burning your face off, just getting enough heat to sooth that grossness of the hangover you're feeling. 
Hardware: 32oz Mason Jar with lid. It's nice to be able to drink the thing out of the same thing you shake it in).  Muddler. If you do use any peppers in this, you'll need this to bash them up into mush.
Ice.  This should be obvious too, but you should have plenty of ice laying around to use in this.














The "heat" comes from the seeds and the whitish veins inside the pepper.  You can slice them out before you marinate them if you want, but we're going all-out here and leaving everything in.





This is the Arctic Chill Muddler at work.  It has a toothed head which makes it great for mashing things up like this. 









Our original Bloody Mary mix can be found here.

Bloody Spice Mix:
We usually don't give out measurements but we'd be screwing you if we didn't give any in this case.  So, when making the full-size 32oz monster version of this drink:
4 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce.
2 Tablespoon cider vinegar.
1 (maybe 1.5) Tea-spoon of tube-wasabi or horseradish.
0.5 Tea-spoon of chili powder (or chili paste... some places have it).
Between 0.25 and 0.5 teaspoon liquid smoke (brands differ in their strength and vary widely).
Mix all this stuff together with a whisk or fork until it's all combined and let it sit until the dried chili powder gets to absorb some moisture.  The goal is to reach the 4oz line on the jar (the lowest line).








Mixing it up at this point would just be to see what the overall color was going to be.

















One day we noticed that all of a sudden there were whiskey distillers all over the place.  So we went out and found the best one and asked them if they wanted to play with us.









Although not related, Six Point Beer is also right in the neighborhood, so you can make one hell of a day out of this area.









Mind-Brain.  It's a thing.












Located in Red Hook Brooklyn (that part where the Ikea is), Widow Jane Whiskey is part of the Cacao Prieto Distillery, and is an amazing place to visit.   They are happy to have you stop by for a nibble of chocolate or a sample of their amazing bourbon, or Rye, or Rum, or the Rum, their other Rum ...you get the idea.  Their store, which also sells chocolate, and tasting counter at this very kick-ass location is open Tues-Fri from 11am-5pm, and Sat-Sun 11am-7pm (because fuck Mondays).  Tours are offered for $10.  







Next door (basically in the same building) you will find Botanica, a cocktail bar and restaurant with a delicious menu of ...things you eat.  We haven't actually chowed-down there yet, but we plan to.  Combine a distillery tour with some dinner at Botanica, and finish with a walk on the scenic Valentino Pier just around the corner, and you've had a great day out in a quiet part of Brooklyn that hasn't been ruined by tourists yet. 


You can track all the locations down from their contact-us page on the Widow Jane website.





Now, with any high quality bourbon, there are going to be trepidations regarding sending it into the swimming hole where the alligators of fiery bloody cocktail territory with nothing but a pair of water-wings.  That's true, in practice, Widow Jane is best had neet or maybe on the rocks.  The vanilla (and sometimes even cocoa) notes are still in there, but when it's in some scorpion stinger juice they're tough to pick out.  The thing is, you don't need us to tell you that.  We could just post a review of what it tasted like to us, but then the only thing that would do is let you know what we think about something you should be drinking yourself.  We're here to help provide creative uses for great spirits for when you want to get your friends into them, but they might not be ready to just dive right in to having the double snifter and joining in with some Cohibas out on the terrace or whatever.  There is always that fear that the pros and aficionados have when they see amazing spirits enter into cocktail recipe arenas that might mute their full potential.

But fear not, because Widow Jane made the sparks fly, and you just weren't gonna get anything like that with some faceless mass-produced plonk from the bottom shelf of a 7-11 or a bullet proof.   Bottom line, garbage in = garbage out, and Widow Jane is quite the antithesis of garbage anything.  Pick some up and try it with this recipe, even if you're not hung over.  You'll notice that everything looks different from that level of win.  We even got a chance to try one of their Heirloom Varietals...  we still can't stop thinking about it.  If the apocalypse happens any time soon, we're running straight to this place and holding out in there.

It's tough to give a full account of all the Widow Jane offerings because we didn't go the full mile on them, but hopefully we'll be bringing you more content featuring their Bourbon, Rye, and other offerings in the future.




Back to the task at hand, our assembly instructions:

Build in a mason jar:   
1) Muddle half a sliced jalapeño in a mason jar.
2) Pour in bloody spice mix to the 4oz line (4 oz).
3) Add tomato juice to the 16oz line (12 oz).
4) Add bourbon to the 24oz line, (8 oz total).
5) Fill jar with ice, close lid and shake to chill.
6) Add more black pepper if desired and garnish.
7) Split this between more than 1 person or come to terms with the fact that you just had 8 ounces of bourbon for breakfast.





Here's a trick to bacon wrapped pretzels.  You can buy some pretzel bites, or better yet make your own (it's not hard).  Then cook whole strips of bacon by boiling them in shallow water (hear us out).  Once they are cooked and soft but with no browning, they will be flexible enough to wrap around the pretzel bites.  Once they're all wrapped up and skewered through, you can then finish cooking the bacon with a cooking torch to get it nice and crispy brown now that it's nice and secure on the stick.  Tadaaaa.   This is also how you should cook oyster crabs.   The cheese stuffed olives we just bought from the store.










Check them out here.

Next Up:  

The Margarita, Revisited.

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Product Review: The Arctic Chill Muddler

Welcome to the first in a new recurring segment of reviews and demos of beverage related items.  This inaugural episode will feature the Arctic Chill Cocktail Muddler and what we think of it.  You will see it in action, you will see it in other things, ...many things.  You will see it in all the 2 dimensional glory that a jpeg can provide the round things in your head used for seeing.

When we were approached by Rizzi of Arctic Chill to take a look at this product, we were happy for the chance to check it out, but skeptical of a stainless steel muddler.  We like tradition and our wooden one had plenty of miles on it.  But in taking a closer look we were surprised at how the Arctic Chill one held up and by the things it could do that we would never try with our old one, like working with ingredients that have a lot of oils in them.

It is available from Amazon.com if you click here.  Also, you can see the other product Arctic Chill has to offer at their own website, Arcticchillproducts.com. They got those neat-o ice trays that let you make totally round ice cubes.

In-between our review photos, we'll be posting important notes so make sure you don't miss anything.  

Muddlers are most often use in preparing beverages and on a number of different types of things, and we will be showing you its performance on at least one thing in the 4 main categories of things that get muddled:  
Citrus: Examples include lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits. 
Leafy: Examples include mint, basil, cilantro, and rosemary.
Fleshy: Examples include strawberries, watermelon, tomato, and grapes.
Other: ...you'll see.






Want to see our old one in action?  Here are a few drinks we've made with it:

Mint Julep
Moonshine Mojito
Sriracha Lemonade

You may notice that these are all leafy examples, and we often use a blender when dealing with citrus.  But for single servings, sometimes a blender is overkill, so we'll be doing citrus with this in that sense.















The Arctic Chill muddler is round.  It gets a little roll-happy, so guess what happened right after we took this picture.  But, that's not a big deal because we store it on this magnetic holder in a vertical position.  Just imagine the black end pointing down (rotated 90 degrees to the right basically).  When stored like that, it's very secure and doesn't move.




Seriously, think about it;  You're doing something with this thing, and you have it slip out of your hands (these things happen).  So now it's either a plastic headed tool heading towards the counter, or a dense metal tipped missile careening through your glass and then smashing into your foot.  ...yeah.




Our wooden muddler was well used, but it was starting to pick up some funk, and there's really nothing you can do about that which doesn't damage the wood further like boiling it or soaking it in alcohol (which would dry the hell out of it).









And jam we did.  We did notice that, if laid on its side, the Arctic Chill muddler will roll right the fuck away with the slightest provocation.  Avoiding this by keeping the muddler standing up on its flat end raises the center of gravity to the point where at the slightest provocation it will fall down and then roll away.  This can be avoided by keeping it in a container or using magnetic holders.

The rolling is actually more of an issue if you're doing what we're doing, which is trying to take lots of photos of it.  If you're using it for its actual purpose, it's not as much of an issue. 



CITRUS










That scraping action from the grooves in the head of it really makes a difference.  As you twist, they scrape over the skins of the fruits, and pull off small bits of zest and release the oils that are always where the strongest flavor comes from.  It's almost impossible for a rounded muddler of any material to do that without using coarse additives like sugar or salt, but let's say you don't want a lot of that or you only have fine sugar or salt around and it's not coarse enough to get the job done.  Even our flat-headed wooden muddler was only able to take zest off because of it's rough irregular surface.  Seeing as how that rough irregular surface is actually the result of little bits of wood coming off after repeated uses, that's not really a good thing.





Derpy Hooves glass can be found all over Etsy.




Putting this muddler out on a table with an assortment of chopped fruits and your bucket of cheap hipster beers, will let your friends make their own shandy creations, and will really class up any get-together you have.

LEAFY

That's chocolate mint.  Apparently that's a thing.










We were worried about this.  The teeth that were so good at citrus smashing simply turned the flat leaves around and around in a circle.  The addition of sugar in the raw did nothing to fix this.





Using the other end was a different story.  Its rounded shape worked extremely well and it wasn't hard to hold it from the other end.  It may or may not be intentional in the design, but either way, it worked. 

FLESHY

Our watermelon margarita was a big hit, but it made almost a gallon of punch and required "il passatutto" which can be annoying to clean.  So what if you just want just one for yourself?  Let's see if we can do that.














Fleshy ingredients usually have seeds and other things in them that you might not want to leave floating around in there.  For something like a strawberry that's not a big deal, but if you end up doing this with a pomegranate, you might want to have the strainer handy.









Our original Bloody Derby did not involve muddling, but our new one coming out will have a special theme, and a mashed up habanero will be an option we will be including.





These peppers are not for the timid.  Even the booze you soak it in is going to end up tasting like fire after only 10 minutes.








We got that swag from our local retailer when Alibi was first released and we bought some.  It's good. 

OTHER

This involves garlic that is very soft from being boiled.  We have not and probably will not ever attempt to use this on raw garlic.









Could you imagine muddling something with oil and butter with an old wooden muddler?  You'd be pretty screwed.  Not only would that oil get absorbed quite a bit, but after 2 days it would start smelling pretty nasty. (You ever had butter or olive oil go bad?  It happens, and it's gross).  Also, since high temps won't harm it by drying it out, you can remove sugary or other gloppy residues with hot water and just watch it dissolve away.

Being stainless steel, the Arctic Chill muddler can perform another important function regarding garlic.  You ever get that garlic smell on their hands that won't come off?  Well rub that handle along your hands under running water, and bang: no more garlic smell.


















Cm'on, you knew we weren't gonna let that joke escape.

It occurred to us that an Achilles heel of this, might be the point where the nylon head attaches to the handle.  We pulled on it and poked at it and it was very secure.  We let it sit in soapy water for 48 hours, to test if any water leaked into the inside of the handle through that part.  No water leaked inside.  We do not know if it is considered "dishwasher safe" but who puts a muddler in a dish washer?

So all in all, the Arctic Chill muddler has serious advantages to it, and you look cool while you use it.  It's not any more slippery than any other muddler, and neither you or your drinks will get any micro-splinters from it (you know the kind we mean). The biggest drawback was in fact, the rolling we encountered, but that's not a big enough issue for us not to recommend getting one. 

You can got to Amazon.com and pick one up for you and as a stocking stuffer for that "cool uncle" you have.  Or if you are that "cool uncle" (you know who you are) give these to those college kids when they're over for the holidays.  It's amazon, use your Amex points or frequent flyer miles even (that's a thing right?).

We did not feature the actual unboxing because... why would it matter.  Here's all you need to know: It comes in a box.  The box opens easily, but the box shouldn't be used for muddling.  You can see it at Arctic Chill's own website here.

Our thanks go out to Rizzi and the rest of the team at Arctic Chill for giving us the opportunity to muddle the hell out of many things. 

You will see this muddler again in our upcoming Applejack-Off major event, when we use it to make our unique "Apples & Oranges" cocktail.

See you there.