spiked horchata
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spiked horchata
Rice 🫱🏻🫲🏽 Spice 🤝🏽 Booze
I’ve thought about doing this longer than I care to admit to. After working 14 years in restaurants, and having a love for Mexican cuisine for just as long, I’m no stranger to enjoying Horchata — but even when I worked at Mexican restaurant for a third of my career, the job to supply our guests with this beverage was always trusted to more reliable hands in the kitchen.
As with any traditional staple, everyone and their grandmother has a recipe for Horchata. I went down a rabbit hole of research before deciding on this approach, tailoring the spec for cocktails.
On paper, my recipe is incomplete as I do not ‘finish’ it by adding water or milk to lengthen the base of rice, spice, and sweeteners. I did so intentionally to anticipate the addition of spirit and dilution thereafter, making more of a ‘stock’ to retain more flavor and not over-dilute.
In video, I went with a 2:1 ratio of stock to tequila, but in all honesty, it would be better balanced by 1:1. So, here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
1.5-3oz Horchata Stock (recipe below)
1.5oz Reposado Tequila
Directions
Combine your horchata and tequila of choice (or other spirit - rum or whiskey would be great here, too), add ice, shake, and double strain into a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with freshly shaved nutmeg.
How to Make Homemade Horchata Stock
1 cup of long grain rice
2 Mexican cinnamon sticks
2-3 star anise pods
0.25 cup of sliced almonds
2 cups of water, hot
1 cup of sugar
1 can of evaporated milk
0.5 can of condensed milk
Toast rice, spices, and almonds together in a pan on medium to high heat until rice turns lightly brown and spices become aromatic.
In a container, combine toasted rice and spices with water, let it rest overnight.
Blend rice on high for 60 seconds, and fine strain to extract spiced ‘rice milk’.
Combine remaining ingredients, then blend. Store in fridge for up to 2 weeks.
