welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen and cocktails 101 where we're
going through all of the background stuff that you need to get ready for
your first or next cocktail party and today we're going to make grenadine
grenadine serves a bunch of different purposes in cocktails first the color
that nice bright red color that it brings sweetness because essentially
it's just a pomegranate flavored simple syrup so that sweetness and just that
hint of pomegranate flavor now I'm in Canada and you may have noticed in the
past that all of our labels are in French and English and in this case the
French side is exactly the same as the English side and that's because the
French for pomegranate is Grenada so let's get into this it is essentially a
simple syrup 1 to 1 sugar and liquid in this case the liquid is pomegranate
juice and you can juice the pomegranates yourself if you want or you can cheat
and get freshly squozen pomegranate juice which is what I did
turned out that that buying squozen fresh juice was cheaper than buying the
pomegranates next in is sugar and this is a simple syrup so it's one to one one
part liquid one part sugar you should do this by weight of course especially
since I'm using a brown sugar or a Demerara sugar if you were using white
granulated sugar you could do it by volume and it would it would work out
just fine so in goes the sugar see if I can do
without splashing yes now I'm gonna put this on a fairly low heat you don't want
to bring it to a boil you just want to heat it gently until the sugar dissolves
now I used Demerara sugar because I want to build sort of these deep earthy tones
into my grenadine I know that people are a little bit weird about sugar so you
can use whatever kind of sugar you want to use but of course white granulated
works just perfectly in this as well now in order to build the flavor even
farther I'm gonna use pomegranate molasses
vogt a quarter cup of pomegranate molasses and yes I'm
measuring over the pot get a little bit extra it's not that big of a deal so and
it goes
okay hmm that is really powerful that's so super flavourful okay
so just keep stirring this over a low gentle heat until the sugar is fully
dissolved and once the sugar has completely dissolved I'll pluck off the
heat and let it come to pretty much room temperature
okay now that it's cooled we can add the last two ingredients the first one is
orange blossom water and you can leave this out if you don't want to buy it or
you can't find it it is sometimes difficult to find although here in
Toronto it's pretty much everywhere and it's just a teaspoon now here's the deal
why you might want to leave it out I've had this bottle of orange blossom water
for a very long time I've cooked with it several times and I've only managed to
use that much it's the kind of thing that's on the fridge door on the inside
of the fridge door that every time you open the fridge you look at it you go oh
there's that orange blossom water what am I going to do with that stuff I'm
gonna make grenadine syrup of course you're only gonna use just a
tiny a little bit so it's gonna last forever
now I'm gonna mix that in so here is here's the deal with storing this
grenadine syrup sugar itself is a preservative and so you put this in the
fridge and it's gonna last four to six weeks on its own you don't have to add
anything to it just keep it in a sealed container four to six weeks it's gonna
be fine but if you want to extend that life a little bit longer maybe eight to
ten weeks you can add a shot of vodka or neutral grain spirit alcohol and this
should extend the life out probably 810 weeks okay let's see if we can pour this
into the bottle without spilling everywhere although I've already spilled
now you notice our red color is much deeper than what you see with the Roses
grenadine and part of that of course is that we're dealing with real pomegranate
juice okay so let's give it a taste test a
couple spoons and let's see I'm gonna try ours first so I like the color even
though it's more of a brownie red than this bright red pomegranate right off
the top um really nice pomegranate flavor it's sweet but the sweetness is
kind of in the background that pomegranate flavor cuts through at the
top you also really get a hit of that orange blossom water even though there's
only a tiny little bit in there it's sort of jump straight to the top right
to the front it's really nice that's gonna add a lot of flavors to cocktails
that's gonna be really good now the Roses this is the one that
everybody sees this is the one that everybody knows it's in every
supermarket go to a cocktail shop this is the one that they're gonna sell I
have seen craft Grenadines yeah and I have tasted craft Grenadines and ours
this one right here is with the best of the best of the craft points that you
can buy so let's give this a try now the color is unnatural it's a thinner syrup
definitely a thinner syrup right off the top sweet
number one thing is sweet sweet sweet sweet a little bit of the orange blossom
water I can kind of taste that although I didn't cleanse my palate so there's
probably people out there yelling you didn't cleanse your palate pomegranate
flavor not really not at the front it's sweet first and then there's a little
bit of pomegranate flavor I think the pomegranate molasses in this
one really helps to deepen that flavor as well as using the brown sugar really
deepen that flavor in a pinch yeah this is great if this is what if you don't
wanna go to the trouble of making this in a pinch this will work definitely but
I got to tell you the one that we just made is fantastic you should really give
it a try thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you