One of my favorite parts about experimenting in the kitchen is messing around with additions to our bar. Whether you regularly drink alcohol or not, flavored syrups can be wonderful, seasonal components to any number of drinks or foods. They’re simple to make and store in your fridge and can be a great way to use the last batch of something fresh — grapes, sage, blueberries…really almost any fruit or herb — before they start to turn.
Each flavored syrup calls for its own ratios, but they’re all pretty flexible, depending on what you’re looking for. You can alter the strength of flavor or sweetness of each by using more of your primary ingredient, less sugar, etc. I talked about this back in the very first edition of Pretty Good, but whether you’re still observing dry weeks/months or not, syrups should absolutely be in your rotation.
Preparations for syrups also vary depending on how hardy the primary ingredient is. For a good mint syrup, you don’t want to cook the leaves at all — simply pour the boiling water and sugar mix into a bowl over freshly chopped leaves, cover until cool, strain, and you’re good to go. Ginger is a much different story.
Ginger syrup was the first one we started making regularly and it’s the one we go back to most frequently. Its core ingredient is cheap, plentiful, and easy to find. It’s wildly versatile and (in my experience) nearly universally beloved. And it’s the core ingredient in one of our signature drinks, which we’ll get into below.
Ingredients
1-2 cups roughly chopped ginger
2 cups white sugar
4 cups water
The ratios here are really what you make of them. The first ever guide I followed for a ginger syrup used a 1:2:4 ginger/sugar/water ratio, which I found didn’t produce nearly a punchy enough syrup, but which I appreciated for not being too sweet. Many simple syrups use a 1:1 sugar-to-water ratio. That’s not necessary here unless you want something very sweet, especially as you’re going to lose a decent amount of water in evaporation. But I like to use more ginger, as it yields a punchier final product.
When it comes to chopping, you don’t need to be too precious. You’re looking for chunks that expose the inner root to the boiling water, but there’s no need to peel or try to get perfectly equal pieces. Just cut away any bits that have dried out and/or discolored and discard them.
Preparation
Add your sugar and water to a medium sauce pot on high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Once it does, add your chopped ginger and bring to a boil, then bring down to a rolling simmer (one where you can still see bubbles coming up), and let slowly reduce for 45 minutes. This will draw more flavor out of the ginger while also concentrating the strength and sweetness as some of the water evaporates. You’re not trying to boil all the water off — it should only reduce by maybe a quarter to a third. But it should at least be a noticeable volume difference from where you started.
At the end of your 45 minutes, kill the heat and let your syrup sit. You want it to come down to room temperature before straining, allowing your ginger to steep a while longer while also yielding a nice, golden color to your syrup. Once it cools, pour through a fine mesh strainer into a vessel with a tight lid, like a Mason jar, and sock in the fridge. It should keep for at least a couple weeks, if not slightly longer. If it shows any signs of mold or starts to smell funny, that’s a pretty good sign not to push it.
Uses
This is a wonderfully versatile syrup. Add it to soda water with a splash of lime for a killer homemade ginger ale. Throw some in your morning coffee — hot or cold — for a totally different flavor profile. Use it in place of sugar in an old fashioned, or with grapefruit juice in a paloma. It’s a wonderful changeup for drinkers and non-drinkers alike. But our favorite application is for our house margaritas.
The house margarita
3 oz silver tequila
1.5 oz ginger syrup
1 squeezed lime
Fill a shaker with ice and add tequila and ginger syrup. Squeeze one fresh lime and add. Shake vigorously and serve in a small glass over ice, with a lime wedge. Salt your rim, if preferred.
These are smooth. Sturdy enough for these last weeks of winter, with a brightness that hints of the spring to come. Also perfectly refreshing on a hot, muggy mid-Atlantic summer night. I genuinely love them, and they’ve never gotten a bad review.
Tip: For an extra ginger punch, pour a small amount of syrup on a small plate and run the outer rim of your glass through it before salting.
You can adjust your syrup levels to taste — I usually just eyeball it. Keep in mind, though, that we’re replacing the orange liqueur of a cadillac margarita, here, with just the syrup and more tequila. The end result is, well…
Maybe I should call this drink The Portfolio.
*considers the value of a 23-year-old movie reference that probably nobody else even remembers or thinks is funny anymore*
OK, maybe not.
But I will say this: be forewarned. We made a pre-going-out round of these for ourselves and our friends one night. When we couldn’t decide where to go, we made a second round. When I finally stood up after the second round to leave, I promptly sat back down and realized that our house was, in fact, going to be where the party was that night. They will absolutely sneak up on you. I suppose that’s the best kind of house margarita — the one that makes sure you’re all set, without ever having to leave it.