Meaty Cocktails

Spice up your next Friday night with a slightly more carnivorous range of booze!

Here I'll talk you through the recipes for three surprisingly tasty alcoholic meat drinks:

• Pizza margarita
• Salmon vodka
• Beef & horseradish Guinness

Don't judge them until you've tried them!

Warning
These alcoholic meat drinks contain both alcohol and meat. They are not suitable for children, teetotalers or vegetarians. Don't look so surprised.

Step 1: Pizza Margarita

Inspired by the grilled cheese martini now available at Beecher's Handmade Cheese in New York, I wanted to make a savory cocktail that evoked all the flavors of a good pizza. After much experimentation and a couple of terrible hangovers, I developed a slightly Mexican take on pepperoni pizza and alcohol:the pizza margarita.

The base of this drink is tequila infused with chorizo, yellow bell peppers and strong buffalo cheese. This makes an interesting and very drinkable spirit on its own (known here in the lab as "tequizo"), but can be rounded out to full cocktail with  a little frozen tomato juice and, depending how strong you like your drinks, crushed ice or mineral water. It should be garnished with chorizo-stuffed olives and a wedge of cheese.

An ordinary margarita would contain Cointreau or Triple Sec as well as fruit (lime) juice and tequila, but I found that the sweetness and citrus notes detracted from the true pizza experience. For people who prefer a slightly sweeter cocktail, I recommend the Hawaiian pizza margarita, a variant that includes pineapple rum.

Ingredients:

• 200ml tequila
• 100g chorizo sausage
• 100g of soft, stinky cheese - I recommend Quadrello di Bufala, Taleggio or Muenster
• Half a bell pepper
• Olive oil
• 40ml tomato juice
• 3 olives
• A handful of black peppercorns

Variant - Hawaiian pizza margarita:

• As above, but with an extra 25ml of pineapple rum

Step 2: Preparing the Meat, Cheese and Pepper

Coarsely chop the chorizo, pepper and cheese.

Step 3: Fry the Meat and Pepper

Fry the chorizo in a little olive oil over a medium heat. Once the chorizo has browned and the oil has turned red, toss in the peppers and continue to cook for a minute or two. Don't worry if the chorizo looks slightly charred; this is actually desirable, as it will as a flavor reminiscent of slightly burnt pizza crust.

Step 4: Bottle It

Transfer the meat, pepper and cheese to a glass bottle. Throw in a handful of peppercorns too.

Step 5: Booze and Infuse

Add the tequila to your bottle of meaty goodness. Leave it to infuse for 24-36 hours in a refrigerator.

Make sure your bottle is well sealed, as this stuff will develop something of an aroma. This is especially important if you share a refrigerator with someone else.

Step 6: Tomato Ice Cubes

While you're waiting for the tequizo to infuse, you can prepare your frozen tomato juice. Pour the tomato juice into ice cube trays of your choosing, and leave them in the freezer overnight.

I opted to make robot ice cubes using the molds left over from my chocolate Instructables robots project.

Step 7: Filtering

Strain the infusion through a fine cheesecloth into another glass container.

Step 8: Preparing the Olives

Take a slice of chorizo and cut it into thin strips, about an 1/8" across. Stuff three olives with these thin strips of chorizo and skewer them on a cocktail stick.

Step 9: Assemble and Serve!

Prepare a chilled margarita or martini glass with your skewered olives and a small slice of cheese.

Pour in the filtered tequizo and add a single tomato juice ice cube.

For a less potent cocktail, dilute with crushed ice or mineral water.

Step 10: Hawaiian Variant

If you'd prefer a sweeter, fruitier cocktail, add 25ml of pineapple rum to make a Hawaiian pizza margarita.

Step 11: Salmon Vodka

This drink is intended to evoke the experience of being stuck in a tiny hut in the far-eastern Russian tundra, with nothing to live on except vodka and cured fish. So many happy memories... Salmon and vodka go together as naturally as bread and butter (indeed, they are seen by some people as suitable dietary replacements for bread and butter), so why not combine their flavours in a single glass?

The result is a bracing, but delicious vodka shot with wonderful aftertaste of salty fish. Unusual, but guaranteed to leave you wanting more.

Salmon vodka is best served with pickles, bread and cream cheese.

Ingredients:

• 750ml vodka
• 100g smoked salmon
• 2 tbsp dill weed
• Sea salt and black pepper
• Pickles, sourdough bread, cream cheese

Step 12: Season the Salmon

Tear the salmon into small pieces and sprinkle the dill weed over it. Grind a little black pepper and sea salt over it.

Step 13: Bottle It

Put the salmon pieces into a glass bottle.

Step 14: Get Stewing

Add 250ml of the vodka to the bottle, screw on the cap tightly and give it a shake. The mixture should go from looking like a clear mountain stream to resembling a murky pond.

Leave it in the refrigerator to infuse for 48 hours.

Step 15: Filtering the Fish

Strain the liquid through a cheesecloth to remove the salmon and the dill, leaving you with 250ml of pale brown, highly alcoholic liquid.

Step 16: Dilute It With... Vodka

You'll now have a small batch of very intensely fishy vodka. At this intensity, the fish taste is rather overpowering, so use the remaining 500ml of vodka (you haven't drunk it yet, have you?) to dilute it to a more sensible fish:vodka ratio. This is, of course, a matter of taste. I found that a 2:1 ratio of pure vodka:fish liquor worked very nicely.

Step 17: Serve!

Serve with pickles and slices of sourdough covered liberally with cream cheese. The order of play is:

• Eat a slice of cream-cheesy bread
• Down the shot of vodka
• Chase it with a pickle
• Repeat until you attract bears

Step 18: Beefy Guinness

Beef and Guinness pie is an incredible comforting winter recipe from, you guessed it, Ireland. It combines the rich, burnt tangy flavor of Guinness with the savoury, meaty taste of beef to stunning effect. This drink is a twist on the traditional recipe, turning it from a steaming hot winter dish into a cool and refreshing summer's pint.

The recipe for Beefy Guinness is very simple. The main flavour, beside the Guinness itself, comes from horseradish. If you like wasabi peas, you'll love Beefy Guinness!

Ingredients:
1 pint of Guinness
50ml of beef broth
2 tbsp horseradish sauce

Step 19: Mix the Broth

Start by adding half your pint of Guinness to 50ml of beef broth and stirring them together.

The Guinness will be turned quite flat by the stirring and straining that you're about to put it through, which is why you're only using half the pint for now. You'll add the other half later to put some fizz back into the drink.

Step 20: Spoon in the Horseradish

Add 2 tbsp of horseradish and stir thoroughly.

Step 21: Strain, Strain, Throw Away

Strain the mixture through cheesecloth to remove any lumps of horseradish.

Step 22: Top Up and Leave to Settle

Use the remaining Guinness to top up the pint and leave it to settle. The horseradish will take a little longer to settle than your standard pint of Guinness, but it will form a similar creamy head.

Step 23: Bottoms Up!

Drink up!

Here are some of the Instructables gang taste-testing the drinks:



Just another day at the lab...