Hi, I'm Kyle from The Distilled Man.
And up next I'm going to show you how to make two cocktail garnishes
that look really fancy but actually really easy to make.
When you're at home even if you make a fancy cocktail, you don't usually go all
out with presentation because well you're at home.
if I were lazy I might be making an old fashioned for instance and
instead of using a rocks glass, I might opt to put my drink in my trusty far
side cows from around the world mug that I've had since I was 10.
It's actually pretty cool mug.
And if I'm skimping on the glassware for my drink, I'm sure as
hell not going to go to the trouble of
making some sort of fancy garnish, right?
That'd just be too much work but here's the thing when it comes to cocktails
what I actually really appreciate is not only the ritual of making the drink and
crafting with all the ingredients but that presentation aspect of finding the right
glass and actually making a little bit of a garnish.
That's what makes it fun, right?
So I think you can figure out the glassware on your own but
today I want to show you 2 simple garnishes that you can use to dress up your drinks at home.
The first one is a lemon twist this one's a great garnish
because it goes with a ton of different drinks and it looks really elegant.
Okay, so to make the lemon twist you just need
three or four things actually, obviously we have a cutting board or surface
to cut on, you need a knife, you need a lemon, obviously, and you can either use like
the tip of a bar spoon or something pointy, I like to use an ice pick.
So, essentially what we're going to be doing is separating the peel of the lemon as
much as we can keep it together from the meat of the lemon.
So the first thing we'll do is we're going to cut off the ends of the lemon.
And what we're going to do now is we're going to take our ice pick or our bar spoon
and we're going to try to sort of separate the peel from the meat and the
first thing you do is kind of put the point in, into the pith.
You don't want to have it in the meat of the lemon and you
don't want to have it kind of too close to the peel.
You want to put it in there, it's actually a lot of pith for this one.
I'm going to put it in like right about here, about an eighth of an inch at first.
And I'm just going to start going around.
And then as I go i'm going to start pushing in deeper and deeper this way, okay.
So, starting to separate the peel.
See it's starting to come off there and I'm pushing deeper and deeper as I go.
And I'm going to keep going until I reach about the halfway point.
Alright, so we're close.
Here we go, about halfway through so what I'm going to do is going to turn it
around and repeat the same thing on the other side.
So put that in there just a little bit first. Getting too much pith.
Now going around and going a little bit deeper as I go.
And at some point my cut from the other side is going to meet up with this side.
And I think we are there.
So you can see it's poking out the other end it looks like I am pretty much,
through the whole thing.
Sometimes we get a little bit more meat on the peel than
you want but that just comes with practice.
So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm actually just going to use my
thumbs and just push the meat of that out.
Now if you want to eat this you can, lots of lemon, lots of vitamin C here.
O r you could squeeze it and use its juice.
But I'm going to put that aside for the moment.
what I'm left here with is this peel, but I want to keep mostly
intact i'm just going to essentially cut one side.
Like that and so we've got this nice long strip here
and that's what we're going to be using to make our twists.
So what I'll do is I'll lay this flat.
Actually, sometimes it helps me this way.
And I'm going to take my knife when
I do it I like to sort of choke up on my knife like this a little bit.
Just be careful not to hurt yourself on the blade but i find it gives me a little
more control and the kind of go like this.
And these things are about maybe a quarter of an inch wide.
And what we're left with, actually this edge is dirty.
Let me cut the next one, let's do this.
See, what you can do is you're going to get a number of twists from just as one peel.
So you can kind of bulk make them ahead
of time so we have this nice, perfect little strip here.
And what we're going to do next is we're going to actually
wrap it around either your bar spoon or your ice pick, whatever you're using, to help make it into a curlicue.
So I'm just going to start wrapping it around.
It helps if you kind of pinch it as you go.
And once it's all completely curled up there,
I'm going to just kind of give it one more last pinch.
And then when I take it off it'll sort of stay together and make this nice little curlicue.
Pretty cool, huh?
The second garnish is a really fun one it's the flaming orange peel.
Now this garnish really captures the showmanship aspect and it looks really impressive
but as you'll see in a second it's very easy to do.
And this was kind of a trademark of Dale DeGroff,
who many people consider to be sort of a godfather of mixology.
He was actually credited with bringing back the term mixology in the 1980s after it was
actually I think it originated in the 1800s.
And Dale used to use the flaming orange peel with a lot of his drinks.
So to make the flaming orange you're
going to need three things, well actually four, I guess.
I prefer to have a cutting board to work on as a surface
but what you really need obviously is an orange, you need a knife and you need either matches or a lighter.
I couldn't find matches I'm just going to show you how to do the lighter.
So the first thing you do is just cut off about,
I don't know, an inch and a half, two inch round piece of the peel.
Peel there and set that aside for a second.
And what you're going to do with your dominant hand is you can actually
point the outside of the peel the orange part towards your drink and you're going
to sort of quickly do a snapping motion.
You can't do it slowly, otherwise it won't work because what that's going to
do is actually shoot orange oil out over the top of the drink and you're going to
put with your other hand you're either light the match or have the lighter
ready with that flame to catch the orange oil and it's going to make this nice little poof.
If you're doing it with a match, one thing to note is that you do
have to light the match and then set it aside for half a second.
Not half a second maybe second and a half two seconds
to let the sulfur burn off a little bit so you don't get that sulfur flavor.
But let's see if this works.
Alright so I'm gonna get my flame ready.
And then I'm just going to quickly...
Alright, so what I did is, I created
this nice like scent of caramelized
orange oil around and I'm just going to
rub this around the edge of the drink.
And put that in and then you have your
fancy flamed orange peel.
And that's the thing with both of these citrus
garnishes they're not just for looks
they also contribute to the smell and
the flavor of the drink because you get
this wonderful citrus aroma right before
the drink touches your lips.
Alright, well if you decide to give either of these garnishes a try let me know how it
goes in the comments always like hearing from you guys.
And be careful with the flaming orange peel, don't light yourself on fire.
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if you want to see more videos like this.
Alright, well thanks a lot for watching and I will see you soon.