Muddling is not to smash the ingredients, but it is only to release the essential oils and flavors. A little tender, love, and care always help while muddling your cocktail.
Take a Mojito or a Caipirinha, classic cocktails that needs muddling to make the best out of the fruits that go into it. You muddle the fruit gently, to release the right flavours without making them bitter. Muddling drink ingredients doesn’t create any dilution.
How to muddle a cocktail
Step 1: Put the fruit/herb/vegetables into the glass. ALWAYS use ONLY toughened glassware for muddling. So do not muddle in wine, Margarita, Martini or Sling glass!
Step 2: Add any other ingredients. Sugar is used as an abrasive ingredient as well as a sweetener in the caipirinha: it helps grind out the flavour from the skin of the lime.
Step 3: Muddle. For fruit and vegetables: hold the toughened glass firmly in one hand while pushing down on the fruit/vegetable with the muddler and twisting it. For herbs: press lightly on the herbs with the flat end of the bar spoon, always holding the bar spoon shaft with your fingers, not pushing down on the bowl with your palm.
Step 4: After muddling, the glass is usually filled with crushed ice and the other ingredients poured in and stirred. Some cocktails ingredients are muddled in the Boston or shaker before being stirred or shaken and strained out.
Check our tutorial below to get an even better view on how to muddle the best cocktail.
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