The traditional margarita is meant to be simple. A blend of tequila, triple sec, and lime juice. Shaken and served over ice, with a salt rimmed glass. But in the process, we’re tossing away the best part of the lime and losing a great opportunity.
For my version we are going to again take what we learned making vanilla, and infuse lime flavour into the tequila. This involves zesting the limes into a clean mason jar (or ziptop bag), avoiding the bitter white pith. Then top it up with reasonable quality tequila. In this case I used the zest of 5 limes, with 8 ounces of Olmeca Altos Tequila.
Seal the jar tightly, then submerge into 140F (60C) water, and let infuse for 1 hour. Alternatively, you could let it infuse at 115F for 3 hours, or at room temperature for 3 months.
While the tequila and lime zest are doing their thing, juice the limes, but reserve one half for garnish. This should yield about 1 cup (8oz) of juice.
After an hour, carefully remove the jar of tequila and make note of how amazing the colour is, that’s flavour country right there. Strain the tequila through a fine mesh sieve, and return the tequila to the jar for storage.
You could stop here, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you. What you have made is a really great lime infused tequila that works beautifully in margaritas, cocktails, or just shooting straight when you’re planning to get black out drunk. But I believe there is still more we can get out of that zest, so I added it to the lime juice along with 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup water, and brought that up to a simmer allowing the sugar to dissolve. I then turned off the heat and let the lime zest steep in the warm lime syrup.
And I didn’t stop there. After letting the juice and zest steep I passed it through the fine mesh sieve again, allowing the zest to drip dry. I then put the zest on a parchment lined tray and dried it in my toaster oven for a few hours at a very, very low temperature.
Once dry I put it in a spice grinder with some course rock salt and pulsed it a few times to make lime infused salt. I should point out that after all this work the lime salt was the greatest achievement. It has since gone into many of my recipes, most notably rice.
At this point, we are now ready to make a margarita. So in a shaker filled with ice, add your lime-infused tequila, with a splash of triple sec, and some of your lime-infused simple syrup. Shake well and set aside. Using that reserved half a lime, rub the rim of a glass, then press the glass into your lime salt. Add ice, pour in your margarita, and garnish with lime.
Now sit back and enjoy a drink that took you about three hours to make, it will be worth it. Alternatively you could put all this in a blender and make a slushy version. Or better yet, get some dry ice and make a thoroughly boozy lime sorbet.
