20 Feb Let’s Not Put a Label on It Cocktail Recipe
Let’s Not Put a Label on It Cocktail Recipe
When we went to Hank’s on the Hill to do our photo shoot for our article on Cook’s Cook about reading a cocktail menu, it wasn’t strictly necessary that the drinks taste good. They just needed to be photogenic, and in the right glasses. They were delicious, though. In particular, the memory of ‘Let’s Not Put a Label On It, Let’s Keep It Fun’ has stuck with us ever since. We’d been trying to make it ourselves for some time, without much success. The problem was getting the St. Germain foam right. Hank’s was soft and fluffy, and lasted as long as the drink. Ours ranged from too firm to too liquid, and they always dissipated too quickly. We tried making it to a variety of proportions in our whipped cream dispenser, none of which worked.
We tried ‘dry’ shaking the egg white and St. Germain in the cocktail shaker; that was better, but still not what we wanted. We learned that acid helps stabilize an egg white foam, and shifted the lemon juice from the body of the drink to the foam; that also was better, but we couldn’t quite get the proportions right–until the bartender at Tamarine gave us a hand. While we were enjoying the excellent foam in his El Camino, we mentioned that we’d been stumped by a St. Germain foam, and he shared with us his secret formula: 2/2/2/1. Two cartridges of nitrogen, two egg whites, 2 oz desired flavor, 1 T acidic ingredient is the right balance to make your foam fluffy and lasting. It worked!
Ingredients
- 2 oz mezcal
- 1/2 oz hibiscus liqueur
- 1/4 oz lemon juice
- St. Germain foam (if you have a whipped cream dispenser)
OR
- 1 egg white and 1/2 oz of St. Germain (if you don’t)
Instructions
- If you have a whipped cream dispenser, use the secret formula to make a St. Germain foam: 2 oz St. Germain, 2 egg whites, and 1 T of lemon juice, charged with two cartridges of N2O.
- If you don’t have a whipped cream dispenser, add lemon juice, egg white, and St. Germain to a cocktail shaker without ice, and shake for 20 seconds.
- Add mezcal, hibiscus, and lemon juice (if not used in the dry shake) to the shaker.
- Fill with ice to above the level of the liquid.
- Shake for 20 (more) seconds.
- Strain into a cocktail glass.
