Um, gross? Eggs are for breakfast and for baking and, raw, for Rocky. They are also for texture — in cocktails, as it turns out. Try it, Sam I Am. You might like it.
Egg whites will provide nothing in the way of taste (or odor, importantly), but they do add silky, foamy body that gives a drink richness.
And, a frothy drink has assets that the others don’t: the foam allows bartenders (creative ones) to use cocktail bitters to decorate.
Warming up to the idea?
Here’s how to do it yourself. (Thanks, Cocktail101.com for the primer.)
How to separate and egg. There’s no right way, or best way, to separate an egg. But if you’re concerned about salmonella, the bacteria that enters the egg through the shell, here are some ways to keep the white from touching the shell:
• Crack the egg as usual, but dump the entire egg into the palm of your scrupulously clean hand. (It’s a good idea to remove rings for this technique.) Let the white ooze through your fingers into a bowl, while holding the yolk in your cupped hand.
• Use a slotted spoon, letting the white run through the slots and the yolk stay in the spoon.
• Try a small funnel, letting the white drip through the funnel, leaving the yolk behind.
• Crack the egg into a small bowl. Use a teaspoon to scoop out the yolk.
• Use an egg separator, a kitchen gadget into which you crack an egg. It does the work of separating the white from the yolk. Frankly, though, if you’ve got a full bar setup at home, you already have an egg separator: a Hawthorne strainer.
Tip: Cold eggs are easier to separate than those at room temperature; the yolk breaks less easily.
Shake it up. Mixing up an eggy cocktail requires a little extra work because you need to emulsify all the ingredients, to make sure the whites form their protein structure. In short, shake the bejesus out of the cocktail for one to five minutes.
Some bartenders swear by the so-called dry shake, in which you add all of your ingredients to your shaker, except for the ice (this makes it “dry”), and shake to emulsify the egg with the other ingredients. Add ice and shake again to chill and dilute the drin
Fortunately, the drink is reward enough for your hard work.
Now, here’s your homework:
ALMOST SEPTEMBER
50ml white rum
25ml lime juice
20ml cacao blanc
15ml egg white
5 – 10ml crème de violette
Shake all the ingredients hard with plenty of cubed or cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. This drink needs no garnish given its unusual color.
Says the author, “This was the surprise hit of the evening and I ended up having to make several more before the evening was over.”
photo Originally posted: 9/5